Chapter V: Part 5

Now it may be difficult to suppose that God has ever spoken in the world. But if we think He has, it cannot be irrational to take His word and believe it; it cannot be absurd to trust a Divine message, when we are every day trusting human messages. And one thing further. When we trust a friend's report, we do not make our previous ideas of what is probable, a test of how much we shall believe of what he says. If we were already competent to say what happened, we should not go to him for information. Unless it is impossible, or against all the laws of probability, we assent to what he says, however much it may surprise, or startle, or alarm us; if we cannot do this, we have not real trust. But trusting it is irrational "to pick and choose;" to say this we will accept and that we will reject, according as it seems antecedently likely or not. Surely this must be also true of divine testimony. If God, the perfect, the unerring intelligence, speaks, we are at least to give Him the same respect we should show to a fellow-man; we are not to say, "this is credible and I accept it; that is strange, mysterious, and I must reject it." If we knew beforehand what was true, to what end would God give the revelation? And if we do thus sit in judgment, we simply show (unless we are dishonest) that we do not believe that God has spoken. Hence, what is called the submission of reason, which, in the large sense of the word, it is only rational to give, if God has indeed given a message to the world. Protestants so submit to the teachings of the Bible; Catholics do to the teachings of the Church. If God really speaks in either, it is as rational to do so as it is to trust Stanley's reports of the lakes and jungles, the weird forests and strange inhabitants of Central Africa--yes, as much more so as Stanley is a man, and God is God. Most simply and frankly does Newman say, in speaking of early converts, "The Church was their teacher; they did not come to argue, to examine, to pick and choose, but to accept whatever was put before them." This attitude of arguing, examining, picking, and choosing in relation to things of which we really know nothing, and can know nothing, in our mortal state (though supposedly God knows and has given a certain amount of light) Newman calls Rationalism; and if God has spoken, surely such Rationalism is irrational. The doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, that one creed is as good as another, and that all is opinion, Newman calls Liberalism; but if God has revealed the truth such Liberalism is false.

In writing of Newman as I have, I have been moved by old attachment and personal veneration. But if I have incidentally contributed to show that a Catholic need not necessarily be either a weak man or a dishonest one, as is sometimes taken for granted among Liberals, I shall not be sorry. My opinion is that Newman differed from the stock Protestantism of his day, largely because he sought out light and sought it with a mind which for eagerness, keenness, subtlety, depth, has rarely been surpassed; that he left the Church of England because it was neither fish nor fowl--and rationality and consistency were not in it; that he went to Rome, because, taking his premises for granted, reason pointed that way. And yet the guarded way in which I have spoken has probably been noticed by my readers. I have not said that reason, abstractly speaking, was on his side, but that starting from his premises his course was reasonable--his premises being those to which most Christians hold. The difference was that he took them seriously and they became living principles, germs of ample growth in his mind, while others held them unthinkingly; that he had the rare power of realizing his ideas, while others took them as mechanically as we often take the stars at night--points of light they are to us and nothing more. But whether his premises were really sound is another question. My mature judgment is that they were not; had I been able to hold my Christian faith as I once held it, could I have resisted the solvents that science, and criticism, and philosophy were bringing to bear upon it, I should have gone I know not where; as it is, I am a Liberal (though not in Newman's sense). The ordinary idea of God I cannot hold, nor does it seem likely that I shall ever hold an idea of God with which the idea of a special revelation would be congruous; and even were the ordinary idea of God a true one, I think that the matter-of-fact evidence of a revelation through Jesus is insufficient. Reluctant as I was to admit it, struggle as I might against it, the share of Jesus in the errors and illusions of his time (the sense of which grew upon me) made it impossible for me at last to absolutely trust his consciousness; however great, however sublime a figure he was, it appeared that he belonged after all to our fallible humanity. Hence in my view we were thrown back on ourselves; we may have great and consoling beliefs about life and its purpose, about death and what lies beyond, about the fathomless Power from which we come and on whose bosom we rest; but a revelation we have not; they are beliefs which we ourselves form and do not receive from without. Rationalism, though not in the sense in which Newman used it, becomes the only method; and Liberalism, in the sense that whatever creed one may hold none can claim to be infallible, or of exclusive divine authority, and that good men of different creeds should respect and tolerate one another, becomes at once a necessity and a duty.

Newman has taken his way; other men, let us trust, with the root of piety in them as truly as it was in him, have taken theirs; the ways are far apart--which is truer, time, the future, perhaps the ages alone can tell. But we are bound not to revile him, as he in sober truth never reviled us.

INTER-MIGRATION.

BY RABBI SOLOMON SCHINDLER.

The immigration problem, which I have been discussing in previous numbers of THE ARENA, cannot be unravelled without considering one important thread which adds to the entanglement. I shall apply to it the term "Inter-migration," a word not found in the dictionary, because it is freshly coined for the purpose. Let me try to define its meaning.

A person is said to migrate when he leaves his native land, seeking a new home in some other country. Around the word emigrant or immigrant hovers always the idea of an exchange of habits, customs, and language of one country with those of another. The immigrant, when he arrives at the place which he has chosen for his new settlement, appears by his dress, his language, his manners, yea, even by his features, a stranger; one who has apparently no right to press himself upon the community; one who must not feel offended if he is mistrusted, until he has shown that his arrival will not prove dangerous to the old settlers. Around the word emigrant hovers the idea of distance; he comes from far-off countries, from a place which cannot be easily reached, or from which information concerning himself cannot be readily obtained. We call a person an immigrant who comes to us from a distance of at least a few thousand miles, and from a country that differs from ours in the forms of government as well as in customs and manners. We would surely not call a person an immigrant who comes from a village of Maine or New Hampshire to Boston, nor even if he should come from the far South or from the extreme West.

Yet, what is the difference? He is a person who has left his native home, who is as much a stranger among us as the one who comes across the ocean. His manners may be as different from ours, his features may show at a glance, whether he is a southerner, a western man, or whether he comes from down east; even his language may be strange on account of the peculiar accent which he gives his words, and the idioms which he uses. It may frequently happen that two people, who both think they speak the English language will be unable to understand each other, on account of the difference in dialect. The new-comer may prove to be as much, or even more, of an undesirable element among us, as the one who comes from Ireland or China; his presence in the labor market may tend as well to reduce the rates of wages as if he had come from Hungaria or Bulgaria. There is no denying the fact that a locomotion has taken place, that an individual has transplanted himself from one place to the other, either on account of the urging of his venturesome spirit, or for the sake of finding a better market for his abilities, or driven out by force of adverse conditions. There is little difference whether a person leaves Russia on account of his dissatisfaction with the government, or an arbitrary legislation which deprives him of his opportunities; or whether he leaves a village in Nebraska because he finds he is unable longer to withstand the grinding process of the land sharks, or the sweating system of the factory owners. His intentions are to better his condition; precisely the same as are those of him who crosses the Atlantic. The one will sell his all to pay his passage on the steamer, the other to pay for his railroad ticket, and both will arrive penniless. Yet the one is called an emigrant or immigrant, and the other is not, although the distance from which the latter comes may be the same or even greater than that from which the former hails.

In order to distinguish between these two classes of migration, I call this latter one "Inter-migration," and desire the term to stand for a change of habitation occurring within the boundaries of a land that is under the same government.

Inter-migration, although it has never before reached the development to which it has risen in the present, is not a new form of the migratory habit of peoples. Ancient records tell us that a forced inter-migration has frequently taken place. The conquerors of old, desirous of making one nation out of the many peoples they subdued by their valiant sword, would transplant large numbers of individuals from one province to another distant one, giving their land and their possessions in exchange to settlers, whom they drew from some other country. Their scheme, however, rarely succeeded, because the difficulties of a long journey made it impossible for them to transplant a sufficiently large number of people; the masses remained undisturbed, the few new-comers were soon absorbed by them, and the desired change of sentiment was not produced. The moment the government was attacked by a new conqueror, all provinces would at once rise in revolt, and thus hasten the downfall of empires, such as was, for instance, the Persian, before the onslaught of so small an army as that with which Alexander the Great crossed the Hellespont.

The golden era of the Roman Empire, and the prosperity and the culture which then prevailed, were made possible solely through the facilities which were given to inter-migration. Good roads connected the ends and dissected the width and breadth of the great Roman Empire. Travel was well protected. A well-drilled army suppressed highway robbery, and an excellent navy put down piracy. A resident of Gaul could with ease settle in Syria, while the Syrian, if he so desired, could find with ease a home in Gaul. The residents of Brittania and Greece could with comparative ease inter-migrate, and had not the floods of barbarians which deluged the Roman Empire put an end to civilization, and with it the possibilities of inter-migration, we might stand to-day on a much higher round of culture, and our knowledge might have been much greater than it is.

If the inventions of the nineteenth century have made possible emigration to such an extent to-day as never before existed, it has still more facilitated inter-migration. It has almost destroyed the equilibrium between the centripetal and centrifugal forces, giving the advantages to the latter. The facilities of locomotion have made people restless; the times have passed by when grandchildren would live in the same house in which their grandparents lived or when they consider it a hardship and misfortune to move out of such a habitation, or to see it change owners; time has been, when only the adventurer left his native place, and when it was considered dangerous to go into the world, which at that time could be circumscribed by a radius of a few miles; time has been, when people lived for generations in the same house, in the same street, in the same village or town, when even the household furniture became venerable on account of its antiquity and the remembrances connected with it. What boy or girl in our day plays around the chair which their great-grandfather used to occupy? To sell one house and move into another; to leave one city and seek settlement in another, is now the rule and not the exception; and it is mainly this inter-migration, stirring up the masses, to which is due our increased prosperity and our progress in all branches of knowledge. Inter-migration keeps us from stagnation; it removes shyness and fear at the sight of a stranger, accustoms us to an intercourse with different people, removes prejudices and superstitions, and facilitates the exchange of thoughts and ideas.

On the other hand, it cannot be denied that intermigration has also its drawbacks; that it will easily flood the labor market so as to screw down wages; it will foster the venturesome spirit, induce people to risk a certainty for an uncertainty, and especially has it tended to draw people from the rural districts to the large cities.

All the complaints heard against immigration, and all the pressure that is brought to bear upon the government to restrict it, do not come from the rural districts, but from the large cities; and it is generally overlooked that the competition, which presses down the compensation for labor to such a degree that the wages earned for hard work are sometimes not sufficient to support one person, and far less a family, is not brought about solely by the immigrant who comes from abroad, but is, to a very great extent, the consequence of inter-migration, of the influx of villagers into the cities. While in country places there is a scarcity of labor, thus in New England, for example, while many farms are vacant, there are people starving in the cities, unable to obtain work. The increase of large cities and of their population is beyond the proportion in which it formerly stood to that of the country. This has aroused the thoughts of many long-headed people, and investigations are being made on every hand, especially because some people are moved by fear that city life will corrupt morality. They take it for granted that country people are virtuous, and that vice finds its domicile only in the large centres of population, and having established these premises, they argue that the tendency of country people to move into cities shows a degeneracy on their part, or that the abnormal growth of cities is a sure token of the moral depravity which has taken hold of the people. This, however, is not true. There is as much iniquity in proportion in small communities as in large ones, and not unfrequently wickedness and viciousness are attributed to actions which, after all, are neither wicked nor vicious, but merely strange to one who is not accustomed to them. The tide of inter-migration, which swells the population of the cities, has its natural causes, of which moral corruption is the least.

The philosophers of the individualistic school will take exception, when I name as the first cause of the tendency to leave the village for the city, the fact that the more society becomes organized, the more each individual becomes a part of a system, the easier it is to obtain comfort, and that, having found the proper place, one can more easily excel in that sphere of life. True, a man living in a village may be able to secure for himself, without excessive labor, food that would keep him from starvation, and raiment and fuel to protect him against the inclemency of the weather; but man needs more than bread and meat, a coat and a pair of shoes. There are a thousand other things which bring cheer to him and make his life worth living, that he cannot obtain in rural solitude. He claims a right to these comforts, and tries to obtain them by seeking them where they are to be found. If simple support, which rustic life insures, was preferable to the insecurity of earning a livelihood in the city; if plenty of coarse food and the healthier habitation which the village offers, were sufficient to induce the over-worked, half-starved, and ill-tenanted city laborer to give up for them the other comforts which city life offers him, we should soon behold an exodus from the city to country places, instead of observing the growth of the centres of population. It is the tendency to work in a system and with a system which increases as the human being rises in culture and civilization. This is the magnet which draws people to large cities, and holds them there, despite the many drawbacks which naturally adhere to it.

The facility of locomotion and of transportation have made possible an interchange of commodities which has never been so before. The world has become one marketplace, upon which the commodities are thrown, and in which he who is able to sell an article of the same quality at the lowest rate will have most customers. When grain can be produced in large quantities in the West, so that it can be sold at a lower rate in the East than the cost of its production would be there, it is quite natural that the Eastern farmer must go to the wall, and it is no wonder he deserts his farm. The less the raw material can be used in its natural state, and the more our refinement demands a long process of converting it into a commodity, the more does it require systematic, organized, skilled labor to perform that conversion. With sufficient land a few people can raise such an abundance of raw material that the labor of thousands of people will be called for to change it into useful articles. It is the system, the developed social organization, which draws the villager to the city, and as an illustration I shall point to the sudden and unparelleled growth of the city of Berlin.

Twenty-five years ago Berlin was not quite as large in population as is Boston to-day, and its area was much smaller. Berlin is situated in a sandy, sterile country; so to say, in a desert. There is no navigable river to connect it with the ocean, nor are minerals or coal found in its immediate neighborhood. When Berlin was made the seat of the German government, the first result was that thousands of government officials were removed from other places to this city; then the garrison was enlarged. More commodious roads were built to connect the capital with the provinces. This attracted business men, as well as thousands whose services in all branches of life were required. The manufacturer soon followed, and Berlin became in a short time a commercial centre. Leipsic lost its prestige and Nuremberg its renown. The organized net-work of labor makes it possible now for a million and a half of people to live and prosper on that sterile ground. Let Berlin cease to be the capital of Germany, through any unforeseen event, and its population will melt away at once. Like iron filings hanging on a magnet, in which one particle attracts and holds the other, thus are people attracted to and held in places where society, and with it labor, is organized.

Another and weighty reason to account for inter-migration, and especially for the increase of population in cities, is that agriculture, too, has undergone a change. The inventive genius of our age, which keeps on creating labor-saving machinery, has not left this branch of occupation untouched. As the mechanic had to go in order to be replaced by the factory owner, thus the small farmer can no longer exist beside a syndicate which will systematically cultivate large tracts of land. The tendency of the time is to apply system also to agricultural pursuits, to take that art out of the sphere of instinct and to transplant it into the sphere of science.

In this paper I have merely sought to bring before the mind of the reader important facts which are usually overlooked in the discussion of the problem under consideration, believing it to be necessary to adduce all the important evidence which bears upon the subject in order that he may form a just and enlightened opinion on a great living question of the first magnitude, as a frank statement of a problem is of far greater value to the honest investigator than any amount of ingenious reasonings from a narrow or distorted point of view.

HE CAME AND WENT AGAIN.

BY WILL N. HARBEN.

He was the humblest man in the world. He wore ragged clothing and lived in the filthiest tenement-house in New York. He was unlettered, had never opened a book, and seemed to know little of the ways of men. His hair and beard were long, and like golden silk; his eyes held the blue of infinite space.

When wealthy people passed him they shook their heads and said, "He is demented;" but the poor, who knew him, lowered their voices when he was near and whispered that he belonged to a better world, for in his eyes they saw a strange light of eternal kindness.

"Why are you so good to me?" the poor would ask, marvelling over his tears of sympathy.

"Because I love you," he would answer, "and love is the mother of all that is good. If you will love men as I do your way of life will be strewn with roses from heaven and your vision know no end."

He had never been in a church nor heard one word in the Bible, and yet, with a far-away light in his eyes, he used to talk of immortality and infinite love. "Love is everlasting life," he would say, "love is eternal."

His poor old mother did not understand him, and she was often troubled on his behalf. She used to plead with him to stay with her more and not to give up his life so completely to others.

"Why," she would argue plaintively, "even the great clergymen who preach in the grand churches, and who are said to be the best of men, do not risk their lives and love others as you do. They seldom come here where everybody is so poor." Once he asked her to tell him what the clergymen taught, and when she tried to explain the creeds of the different denominations, he shook his head and turned pale with perplexity and pain.

"I cannot understand," he said sorrowfully. "It all makes my heart ache. It seems to me that the church-members, too, are in the dark. Love is food for the soul and they are starving. People everywhere are dying in crime and pain and no one offers to help them."

One day, after he had been laboring for a week without sufficient food and sleep among the fever-stricken poor, he fell ill, and his mother thought he was about to die. She ran, her gray locks streaming in the wind, to the parsonage of a little church near by and inquired for the minister, but was told by his wife that he had been gone for several weeks to a watering place in the mountains. The old woman ran on further, till she came to a great church whose majestic spire seemed to touch the clouds. A stately rectory was near. Soft music, mingled with merry voices, came out to her through the open doors. Awkwardly and tremblingly she went up the polished marble steps and rang. A servant in livery told her gruffly that his master was dining with his bishop and other distinguished personages, and that she would have to wait.

She replied with a groan that she feared her son was dying. The man went to his master and came back saying, "He cannot see you now."

She sat down in the great hall and tried to pray. Before her hung a costly painting representing Jesus with a child in his arms, a lamb at his side. She smelt the fragrance of flowers, and heard the clinking of wine-glasses, the tinkling of silver and rare china, short speeches and laughter.

"The dean, it seems," she heard the bishop say, "was reproving one of the young clergymen for becoming intoxicated. The young scamp's reply quite took the dean off his feet. 'If I mistake not, sir,' said the young priest, 'the liquor I drank came from your celebrated art-gallery and bar-room.'"

This story was greeted by hearty laughter, and then the old woman heard the bishop giving a description of a new yacht which he had just bought. By and by the rector came out. His cheeks were slightly flushed, his manner betrayed impatience."

"Well," said he to her, "what is it? I am very busy."

"I am afraid my son is dying," she said timidly, abashed by the splendor of his dress and abrupt manner. "I thought some minister ought to see him."

"Where do you attend church?" he asked, looking down at her tattered attire.

"I do not go to any," she faltered.

"I have as much as I can attend to in my own parish," he frowned; "besides my bishop is here as my guest; there is a young theological student with me who will go." And he went back to the dining-room and sent a young man out to her.

"Show me the way," said the student, and he shrugged his shoulders, and blushed because the footman seemed to comprehend the situation.

Without a word she led him through the squalid streets to the house, and up the narrow stairs to her miserable room. The sick man lay alone on a hard couch.

"What can I do for you?" asked the visitor.

A look of hope came into the pallid features of the one addressed. His voice was low and eager when he replied:--

"A poor woman downstairs has fallen and broken her spine. I fear she is without attention, I was trying to reach her when I fell ill. Perhaps you will go to see her; I need nothing."

"His mind is wandering," said the student, turning to the mother. "He could not comprehend anything I might read or say now. He needs medical treatment. You should apply to the public charities." And he went away, brushing the sleeve of his coat which had caught a cobweb.

At her son's request the mother went below. Presently she returned with the information that the injured woman's needs had been attended to. Then she got a Bible and began to read to him for the first time in life. When she had read a few passages he asked her what it was, and she replied:--

"They say it is the Word of God, and that it shows us how to live."

When she was reading of the life of Christ he listened with a profound look of perplexity on his pale face. But when she pronounced the words, "Love thy neighbor as thyself," he uttered an exclamation of surprise, and sat up in his bed.

"I have spoken those words before!" he cried, "but in a different language. It was in another life which seems like a dream. I lived long, long ago, in a far-away land. I had another mother there, Mary was her name, and a good father whom the people called Joseph. I lived there as I do here, but the world mocked me because I tried to teach them to love one another--they could not understand. They put me to death. They made a cross, and hung me on it, on a hill in the direction of the setting sun from Jerusalem. A multitude gathered to see me die."

Amazed at his radiant and transformed countenance, which held in it the light of eternity, she fell down before him crying:--

"My Lord! My Master!"

He lifted her up, his weakness gone.

"Rise," said he gently. "Call me not 'Master,' for I am but the son of God, as you are His daughter. The Father of us all, in His love, is not better than the humblest of His children."

She was going out to cry aloud in the streets that Jesus, the son of God, had come to earth, but he prevented her.

"Speak not of me to them," he said softly; "they could not understand; it would be even as it was before."

That very day he went about according to his humble wont, among the poor and the miserable, spreading joy and comfort everywhere. Wan-faced courtesans, with death and hate in their eyes, despairing thieves, murderers, and would-be suicides, listened to his words of hope and began life anew. He went to the houses of the wealthy and plead in the behalf of suffering men and women, misguided children, and mistreated animals, but was called a tramp and sent away.

One day his mother lead him to the corpse of a dead friend. "Make him live again," she whispered.

He looked down at the dead and smiled infinitely. He took a flower from a vase, and put it into the hand that was cold. "This is the birthday of our friend," he said. "Should I wish to alter the work of my Father, in whose eyes all things are perfect? Our friend is this day delivered from the womb of earthly travail."

One bright morning she came and laid herself at his feet.

"I have heard strange things to-day," she said, "things I have not learned before because I am so ignorant. They say that all the great and good churches in Christendom have grown up upon the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth."

"Nazareth," he repeated dreamily, "I lived in Nazareth."

"They worship him that was crucified on Calvary; ah! they would listen to you now, my Master. You have lived in their memories for centuries. Hear, the bells are ringing. It is the Sabbath, the Lord's day!"

"My Father's day has neither beginning nor end."

"Come, go with me," went on the woman eagerly, "we shall hear them praise your name."

"I will go with you," said he, a strange look in his eyes.

She ran from the room and presently came back with a suit of new clothes which she had borrowed from a dealer: Her face was aglow with pride and joy as she spread them before him.

"What are they for?" he asked in gentle surprise.

"For you," she said, "that you may go into the house of the Lord robed as--as others are."

A blended look of wonder and pain passed over his face.

"The spirit of the man is not clothed with the wool of the sheep that was slain," he said gently. "I will go as I am, and fear naught in my Father's presence."

She led him down several streets till they reached a grand thoroughfare. Along this they went side by side, jostled by the fashionable throng, till they came to a stately church. Going up the broad stone steps they entered the great Gothic doors. A group of men in the vestibule laughed at his long hair and ragged attire. Elegantly dressed ushers were seating the people as they entered. They did not speak to the woman and her son, but smiled at one another, and passed some jests in undertones. After awhile one of them drew near, and said to her:--

"Have you not made a mistake, my good woman? This is St. ---- Church. St. ----'s is the next below."

Tears were in her eyes as she led her son away. By and by they came to another edifice. In a niche in the stone wall near the entrance was the figure of Jesus on a cross. He paused and looked at it for several minutes, murmuring, "Strange! Strange!"

In the vestibule she was so awed by the imposing interior of the structure and the fashionable congregation, that she drew him to one side.

"Perhaps we had better stand here," she whispered. "We seem to be unlike the rest. We shall not be in the way out here, and through the door we can see and hear the service."

He made no answer. He was looking at a grand window on which stood a representation of Jesus, in a stream of light from heaven, bearing the words, "This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." "Strange, very strange!" she heard him whisper, and tears were in his eyes.

No one offered to give them seats, and they remained standing in the vestibule against a wall. A grand organ began to peal out the music of Gounod's Saint Cecilia Mass. Presently it died down; there was a short pause, then, like the rising of a musical storm came the subdued voices of the choristers from the closed vestry. The door was gradually opened, and the music swelled out into the church. The crucifer, a beautiful lad, attired in a blood-red cassock and a white, lace-trimmed cotta, entered. Behind him, chanting, came a long train of choir-boys, followed by two acolytes who swung by chains of brass censers from which rose clouds of fragrant smoke. Two priests brought up the rear; one, the celebrant of the Holy Communion, was magnificently garbed. He wore a trailing black cassock of richest silk, and over it a short lawn cotta trimmed with priceless lace, an enormous cloth-of-gold cope on the back of which blazed a cross wrought in jewels. About his neck he had a white stole, over an arm a snowy maniple, upon his head a priestly beretta.

"Is it not beautiful?" asked the poor woman of her son. But he did not hear her. His eyes, blinded by tears of infinite sorrow, were resting on the white statue of the Virgin near the snowy altar of marble, on which burnt a constellation of tapers and candles around the red lamp of the "Holy Presence."

His breast heaved; a sob escaped him, and his head sank upon his chest.

"And they do this in the name of love," he said, as if in prayer. "They make an idol of my memory while my brothers and sisters are dying for the lack of love and kindness. They do all this to praise me whom they have so little understood. O God, my Father, let this trial pass, or make me as you are that I may, this time, set them right, for I suffer past endurance."

The short sermon ended. The celebration of Mass began. The wafer and the wine were consecrated. The priest raised the wafer before the eyes of the congregation and said, "This is my body," and all heads bowed low.

"At the very instant you hear the bell strike," whispered a man to a boy near the mother and son, "at that very instant the Saviour will be there--listen!"

"Father, forgive them," the woman heard her son say, and she followed him out of the church. They had reached the street when three strokes from a silver bell was heard.

A few minutes later, as they were passing through a squalid street on the way home, they came to a little church. He read her wishes in her face, and they went in. A man approached and showed them to a back seat. On a platform a preacher was striding to and fro shouting, singing snatches of hymns, and praying. In his excitement he would fall on his knees and raise his hands heavenward; again he would spring up and beat himself with his hands, and violently kick the floor, preaching, singing, and praying alternately.

"Save yourselves from the eternal wrath of an angry God!" he cried. "I tell you that hell is yawning for you; the burning breath of countless devils is about you. Christ died to save you; will you not trust in him? Now is the only time; to-morrow it may be too late!"

After awhile the congregation began to sing a hymn, and the preacher went on: "Come forward all who want the prayers of the church. Come now, and embrace salvation!" And men, women, and children trembling with fear, and weeping and groaning, went to the altar and threw themselves on their knees.

The poor woman looked at her son. His face was pale and set as with the agony of death. She glanced over the congregation. People sat there wrestling with the greatest problem of their lives, their faces white, their eyes dilated. Others were smiling as if highly amused at the preacher's actions. Members of ritualistic churches, who had come out of curiosity, were frowning contemptuously, and congratulating themselves on the dignity of their own form of worship.

"I must go," said the son to his mother. "I must be with those that need me. Here they teach that the Eternal Father hates His children. If only they knew Him they would not be afraid."

He never entered a church again. He continued his life as he had begun it, teaching human love and gentleness to all he knew. Once he was trying to save a half-demented drunkard from being beaten by an inhuman policeman, and was put into prison. While he was there his mother died, and when he was released, his health was broken.

A week passed in which he could get no food to eat. He was starving. One moonlit night he rose and staggered out to search for bread, suffering indescribable tortures. His voice had gone. He stood on the corner of a street, and mutely held out his hands to passers-by, but they paid no heed to him. Along the street he tottered till he came to a brightly lighted building. A church was holding a festival. Beautiful women in the height of fashion, children in the daintiest of dresses, were promenading about. He looked in at the door, and when he saw the long tables filled with eatables, his eyes gleamed with the desire of a famished animal. He staggered across the threshold, but was stopped by the door-keeper. "Ticket," said the man. The outcast did not understand, he could see nothing but the food within. A policeman stepped forward and laid his hand on his arm.

"This is no place for you," he said roughly. "You have no money, move on!"

"He looks hungry, wait!" said a little girl, who was pinning some flowers on the lapel of a young minister's coat, and she ran to a table and brought a piece of bread to the starving man. He hugged it in his arms, and tottered out into the night, chuckling to himself in joy. A square where trees and flowers grew was before him. He entered it, and sank on to a bench near a fountain. He looked at the bread, and a savage content captured his features. He was about to break it when a man arose from a seat across a walk, and came and sat down beside him, eyeing the food covetously. He touched the thin hand that held it, and the two men looked into each other's eyes.

"I am starving," said the breadless one. "I have no means. I belong to a family who have descended from kings; I cannot beg. I thought you looked as if you did not want it. I am dying."

The other clutched the food tightly in both his hands for an instant. A look of ferocious desire wrung his face, and he raised it to his lips. Then a divine smile dawned in his eyes, and he proffered it to the other. The man took it eagerly, and slipped into the darkness, that he might eat it unseen. As he turned away the head of the giver sank slowly to his breast.

Brightly lighted streets stretched away in several directions. A procession of men and women bearing banners and beating drums and tambourines passed along, singing hymns, and pausing now and then to kneel on the cobblestones to pray or to urge the little clusters of idlers to join them in their march to safety. Above the wondrous stars and moon were shining as they had shone at the dawn of eternal thought. They shone on the Vatican at Rome, the imperial cradle of saints; on the comfortable homes of ministers in the church; on the "palaces" of gentle-blooded bishops; on assemblages of men who were wrangling over creeds; on gatherings where earnest searchers after truth were being tried for heresy; on prisons where inmates of dark, silent cells were praying for a gleam of light, for but the voice of an insect to keep madness from their tortured brains; on millions of suffering human beings--on the cold, dead form of one who understood naught but love.

O THOU WHO SIGHEST FOR A BROADER FIELD.

JULIA ANNA WOLCOTT.

O thou who sighest for a broader field
Wherein to sow the seeds of truth and right,
Who fain a nobler, wider power wouldst wield
O'er human souls that languish for the light;

Search well the realm that even now is thine!
Canst not thou in some far-off corner find
A heart, sin-bound, as tree with sapping vine,
That waiteth help its burdens to unbind?

Some human plant, perchance beneath thine eyes,
Pierced through by hidden thorns of idle fears;
Or, drooping low for need of light from skies
Obscured by doubt-clouds, raining poison tears?

Some bruised soul the balm of love would heal?
Some timid spirit faith would courage give?
Or maimed brother who, though brave and leal,
Still needeth thee to rightly walk and live?

Oh, while _one_ soul thou find'st that hath not known
The fullest help thy soul hath power to give,
Sigh not for fields still broader than thine own,
But, steadfast, in thine own more broadly live!

AN EVENING AT THE CORNER GROCERY.

A WESTERN CHARACTER SKETCH.

BY HAMLIN GARLAND.

Colonel Peavy had just begun the rubber with Judge Gordon of Cerro-Gordo County. They were seated in Robie's grocery, behind the rusty old cannon stove, the checker-board spread out on their knees. The Colonel was grinning in great glee, wringing his bony yellow hands in nervous excitement, in strong contrast to the stolid calm of the fat Judge.

The Colonel had won the last game by a large margin, and was sure he had his opponent's "dodges" well in hand. It was early in the evening, and the grocery was comparatively empty. Robie was figuring at a desk, and old Judge Brown stood in legal gravity warming his legs at the red-hot stove, and swaying gently back and forth in speechless content. It was a tough night outside, one of the toughest for years. The frost had completely shut the window panes as with thick blankets of snow. The streets were silent.

"I don't know," said the Judge, reflectively, to Robie, breaking the silence in his rasping, judicial bass, "I don't know as there has been such a night as this since the night of February 2d, '59, that was the night James Kirk went under--Honorable Kirk, you remember,--knew him well. Brilliant fellow, ornament to western bar. But whiskey downed him. It'll beat the oldest man--I wonder where the boys all are to-night? Don't seem to be anyone stirring on the street. Aint frightened out by the cold?"

"Shouldn't wonder." Robie was busy at his desk, and not in humor for conversation on reminiscent lines. The two old war-dogs at the board had settled down to one of those long, silent struggles, which ensue when two "champions" meet. In the silence which followed, the Judge was looking attentively at the back of the Colonel, and thinking that the old thief was getting about down to skin and bone. He turned with a yawn to Robie, saying:--

"This cold weather must take hold of the old Colonel terribly, he's so damnably thin and bald, you know,--bald as a babe. The fact is, the old Colonel aint long for this world, anyway; think so, Hank?" Robie making no reply, the Judge relapsed into silence for a while, watching the cat (perilously walking along the edge of the upper shelf) and listening to the occasional hurrying footsteps outside. "I don't know when I've seen the windows closed up so, Hank; go down to thirty below to-night; devilish strong wind blowing, too; tough night on the prairies, Hank."

"You bet," replied Hank, briefly. The Colonel was plainly getting excited. His razor-like back curved sharper than ever as he peered into the intricacies of the board to spy the trap which the fat Judge had set for him. At this point the squeal of boots on the icy walk outside paused, and a moment later Amos Ridings entered, with whiskers covered with ice, and looking like a huge bear in his buffalo coat.

"By Josephus! it's cold," he roared, as he took off his gloves and began to warm his face and hands at the fire.

"Is it?" asked the Judge, comfortably, rising on his tiptoes, only to fall back into his usual attitude, legal legs well spread, shoulders thrown back.

"You bet it is!" replied Amos. "I'd'know when I've felt the cold more'n I have t'-day. It's jest snifty; doubles me up like a jack-knife, Judge. How d' you stand it?"

"Tollerble, tollerble, Amos. But we're agein', we aint what we were once. Cold takes hold of us."

"That's a fact," answered Amos to the retrospective musings of the Judge. "Time was you an' me would go t' singing-school or sleigh-riding with the girls on a night like this and never notice it."

"Yes, sir; yes, sir!" said the Judge with a sigh. It was a little uncertain in Robie's mind whether the Judge was regretting the lost ability to stand the cold, or the lost pleasure of riding with the girls.

"Great days, those, gentlemen! Lived in Vermont then. Hot-blooded--lungs like an ox. I remember, Sallie Dearborn and I used to go a-foot to singing school down the valley four miles. But now, wouldn't go riding to-night with the handsomest woman in America, and the best cutter in Rock River."

"Oh! you've got both feet in the grave up t' the ankles, anyway," said Robie from his desk, but the Judge immovably gazed at the upper shelf on the other side of the room where the boilers, and pans, and washboards were stored.

"The Judge is a little on the sentimental order to-night," said Amos.

"Hold on, Colonel! hold on. You've _got_ 'o jump. He! he!" roared Gordon from the checker-board. "That's right, that's right!" he ended, as the Colonel complied reluctantly.

"Sock it to the old cuss," commented Amos. "What I was going to say," he resumed, rolling down the collar of his coat, "was, that when my wife helped me bundle up t' night, she said I was gitt'n' t' be an old granny. We _are_ agein', Judge, the's no denyin' it. We're both gray as Norway rats now. An' speaking of us ageing reminds me,--have y' noticed how bald the old Kyernel's gitt'n'?"

"I have, Amos," answered the Judge, mournfully. "The old man's head is showing age, showing age! Getting thin up there, aint it?" The old Colonel bent to his work without reply, and even when Amos said, judicially, after long scrutiny, "Yes, he'll soon be as bald as a plate," he only lifted one yellow, freckled, bony hand, and brushed his carroty growth of hair across the spot under discussion. Gordon shook his fat paunch in silent laughter, nearly displacing the board.

"I was just telling Robie," pursued Brown, still retaining his reminiscent intonation, "that this storm takes the cake over anything--"

At this point Steve Roach and another fellow entered. Steve was Ridings' hired hand, a herculean fellow, with a drawl, and a liability for taking offence quite as remarkable.

"Say! gents, I'm no spring rooster, but this jest gits away with anything in line of cold _I_ ever see."

While this communication was being received in ruminative silence, Steve was holding his ears in his hand and gazing at the intent champions at the board. There they sat; the old Judge panting and wheezing in his excitement, for he was planning a great "snap" on the Colonel, whose red and freckled nose almost touched the board. It was a solemn battle hour. The wind howled mournfully outside, the timbers of the stove creaked in the cold, and the huge cannon stove roared in steady bass.

"Speaking about ears," said Steve, after a silence, "dumned if I'd like t' be quite s' bare 'round the ears as Kernel there. I wonder if any o' you fellers has noticed how the ol' feller's lost hair this last summer. He's gittin' bald, they's no coverin' it up--gittin' bald as a plate."

"You're right, Stephen," said the Judge, as he gravely took his stand behind his brother advocate, and studied, with the eye of an adept, the field of battle. "We were noticing it when you came in. It's a sad thing, but it must be admitted."

"It's the Kyernel's brains wearin' up through his hair, I take it," commented Amos, as he helped himself to a handful of peanuts out of a bag behind the counter. "Say, Steve, did y' stuff up that hole in front of ol' Barney?"

A shout was heard outside, and then a rush against the door, and immediately two young fellows burst in, followed by a fierce gust of snow. One was Professor Knapp, the other Editor Foster, of the _Morning Call_.

"Well, gents, how's this for high?" said Foster in a peculiar tone of voice, at which all began to smile. He was a slender fellow with close-clipped, assertive red hair. "In this company we now have the majesty of the law, the power of the press, and the underpinning of the American civilization all represented. Hello! There are a couple of old roosters with their heads together. Gordon, my old enemy, how are you?"

Gordon waved him off with a smile and a wheeze. "Don't bother me now. I've got 'im. I'm laying f'r the old dog. Whist!"

"Got nothing!" snarled the Colonel. "You try that on if you want to. Just swing that man in there if you think it's healthy for him. Just as like as not, you'll slip up on that little trick."

"Ha! Say you so, old True Penny? The Kunnel has met a foeman worthy of his steel," said Foster in great glee, as he bent above the Colonel. "I know. _How_ do I know?" quotha. "By the curve on the Kunnel's back. The size of the parabola described by that backbone accurately gauges his adversary's skill. But, by the way, gentlemen, have you--but that's a nice point, and I refer all nice points to Professor Knapp. Professor, is it in good taste to make remarks concerning the dress or features of another?"

"Certainly not," answered Knapp, a handsome young fellow with a yellow mustache.

"Not when the person is an esteemed public character, like the Colonel here? What I was about to remark, if it had been proper, was that the old fellow is getting wofully bald. He'll soon be bald as an egg."

"Say!" asked the Colonel, "I want to know how long you're going to keep this thing up. Somebody's dumned sure t' get hurt soon."

"There, there! Colonel," said Brown soothingly, "don't get excited, you'll lose the rubber. Don't mind 'em. Keep cool."

"Yes, keep cool, Kunnel, it's only our solicitude for your welfare," chipped in Foster. Then addressing the crowd in a general sort of way he speculated, "Curious how a man, a plain American citizen like Colonel Peavy, wins a place in the innermost affections of a whole people."

"That's so!" murmured the rest. "He can't grow bald without deep sympathy from his fellow-citizens." The old Colonel glared in speechless wrath.

"Say! gents," pleaded Gordon, "let up on the old man for the present. He's going to need all of himself if he gets out o' the trap he's in now." He waved his fat hand over the Colonel's head, and smiled blandly at the crowd hugging the stove.

"My head may be bald," grated the old man with a death's-head grin, indescribably ferocious, "but it's got brains enough in it to 'skunk' any man in this crowd three games out o' five."