Chapter V: on Greeley is prime, but it is hardly true to say (7)

In all northern Africa no invader has attempted suddenly to change the customs of the people, and the local religions have been recognized and their tenets respected. Italy did not seem to profit by this example, for her troops have shown scant regard for the feelings of the Mohammedans, and it will take many years to live down the situation created by the violation of mosques and other injudicious and unnecessary vandalism. Northern Africa would not be what it is to-day if the same policy had been followed by others, and it is fortunate for the world at large that the Italian attack has been made upon the most worthless and most sparsely inhabited part. Less harm can be done there than elsewhere, and with the firm hand of Egypt to the east and France to the west and the physical limitations to the south, the evil effects of this ill-judged attempt at conquest may be confined within present boundaries.

The United States has entered into the field of world politics too late in the day to secure trade by other than competitive power. The earth is now mapped out, and few boundaries will be changed in the future except as it may be deemed wise or advantageous to create more or less self-governing communities. Participation in the financing of new or new-old governments will prove of little avail, for money is now international, and the New York firm which underwrites its allotted portion of an international loan has its branches or even its parent house in Europe, and cannot use its power to draw trade to America without giving offense elsewhere. It really makes no difference in modern times which nation furnishes the money to take up a large issue of securities, for in the end they find their resting-place where there is money willing to be tied up, and this is generally in France, England, or Germany. A debtor nation like the United States, especially one whose people can find active employment for surplus funds at more profit than is offered by government loans, cannot be rated as an international money-lender.

The demand for an international or equal participation in any great money transaction comes in reality not from keen and equal competition for the privilege of investment, but from the machinations of international money, which desires the backing and security of a harmonious group of powerful governments to enforce its terms and insure the collection of the debt without friction on the day it may become due. With this backing the underwriters are assured of their great profits as it decreases the difficulties of unloading the securities upon an investing public at an advanced figure. The modern international loan carries with it no special trading rights, for all governments must now insist upon and obtain for its citizens abroad treatment like unto those accorded other nationalities.

To reduce the cost of production, facilitate the shipping of goods, and meet the local needs of foreign markets, or in other words to conduct foreign trading on an intelligent and scientific basis, is the one hope of the people of the United States in the world expansion of their industries and the profitable employment of labor. In the long run no nation stands a better chance of holding its own by reason of the self-contained character of material resources, the climatic stimulus to work and invention, the so-called unsophisticated enthusiasm of the people for practical accomplishment, and the mixture of racial strength in the make-up of the community. When the home market strikes a balance between production and consumption, and a surplus for export can be relied upon every year, it is reasonable to assume that the same genius will be applied to conquering the foreign market that has been developed at home. In no place in the world is there opportunity for greater gain for American trade than in Africa even to-day, while the future presents no such limitations as are met with in more highly commercially developed areas.

VIOLENCE IN THE WOMAN’S SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT

A DISAVOWAL OF THE MILITANT POLICY

BY MILLICENT GARRETT FAWCETT

President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (Great Britain)

I write from the standpoint of those who regard the women’s movement for political freedom as incomparably the most important political fact of the present day; and who look upon the women’s movement, as a whole, in its social, economical, political, industrial, and educational developments as one of the most remarkable events which have ever taken place in the history of the world. I do not know where one could look for another so nearly universal in its operation, making itself felt in every country in the world, in all civilizations, whether eastern or western, and affecting the well-being of such masses of men and women of all races and nations.

Men’s political movements toward freedom have nearly always been accompanied by “confused noise and garments rolled in blood.” No great emancipating evolution for men has taken place without violence and bloodshed. One of our most learned historians, Lord Acton, wrote: “It seems to be a law of political evolution that no great advance of human freedom can be gained except after the display of some kind of violence.” Yet notwithstanding all precedents to the contrary, but just because men are men and women are women, the women’s movement toward freedom did progress and progress marvelously for the first half of the nineteenth century till about six years ago without the use of any kind of violence. We shot no one, we exploded no bombs, we destroyed nothing; but we have been building up and creating a new social order in which the women of to-day occupy a wholly different and better place from that occupied by the women of preceding ages. The universities have been opened; girls’ schools have been made over again, and made different; the medical and, in many countries, the legal, professions have been opened; municipal and all other local franchises in Great Britain and her colonies have been won; women have been made eligible for election on all local governing bodies; the civil service has been opened; the barbarity of medieval laws founded on the absolute subjection of women in marriage has been modified; full parliamentary suffrage has been won for women in New Zealand and Australia, in Finland and Norway, in Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Washington, and California, and women’s suffrage amendments have been recommended to the electorate by the representative governing bodies of six other of the United States. All these actual victories and indications of further victories in the near future have been won (Lord Acton notwithstanding) without violence of any kind. The American humorist Mark Twain, with his keen practical insight into the essence of things, remarked this strange feature of the women’s movement. He wrote in “More Tramps Abroad,” p. 208:

For forty years they have swept an imposingly large number of unfair
laws from the statute books of America. In this brief time these
serfs have set themselves free--essentially. Men could not have done
as much for themselves in that time without bloodshed, at least they
never have, and that is an argument that they didn’t know how.

All these great and indeed immense victories for the cause of human freedom have been accomplished by moral force and not by physical force. Physical force as a means of promoting women’s freedom was never even heard of till about six years ago, and for the first two and a half years of their activity the so-called militant suffragists did not use physical violence toward their adversaries; they suffered violence far more than they inflicted it.

At the outset, so long as they confined themselves merely to sensational and eccentric means of propaganda, they could hardly be looked upon as a physical force party; they undoubtedly did service to our common cause by making the claims of women more widely known; there is probably hardly a village, hardly a family in which the claims of women to share in the representative system of the country has not been eagerly discussed. This to a very large extent we owe to the activities of the “militants.” But when they departed from the attitude they first adopted, of suffering violence but using none, in my judgment they put themselves in the wrong morally; and if judged from the point of view of practical success have put back the cause rather than promoted it. For twenty-six years from 1886 to 1912 women’s suffrage was never once defeated in the House of Commons. The Conciliation Bill, which had been carried in second reading in 1911 by a majority 316 to 143 after a truce from militancy of nearly eighteen months, was defeated in 1912 by a narrow majority. This was very largely due to the intense indignation and resentment caused by the window-smashing outrages which had taken place a few weeks earlier.

The carrying of a women’s suffrage amendment to the government Reform Bill is the next stage either of victory or defeat which awaits us. If militancy is renewed, defeat is almost certain. The average man is not convinced of the value of conferring full citizenship on women by hearing of tradesmen’s windows being broken, or of attempts to set houses and theaters on fire. The militants often claim that a display of physical violence is the only way to success. This, I maintain, is a wholly mistaken reading of the facts. Our victories have been won through convincing large masses of quiet, sensible, average men and women that the citizenship of women would be good for women themselves and for the State as a whole. We can point to the activities of such women as Julia Ward Howe and Jane Addams in the United States, of Florence Nightingale and Josephine Butler in Great Britain, and can more and more convince our countrymen of the futility and absurdity and the loss to the community of excluding such women, and women at large, from the rights of citizenship. I regard the militants as misguided enthusiasts, and believe that at this moment they are the most dangerous obstacles in the way of the immediate success of our cause in England. But when I compare the degree of violence they have used with the excesses of, say, the French Revolution or the destructive fury which swept over our own and other countries, in connection with the Reformation, or with the awful violence which has occasionally been associated with the Labor movement both in this country and in the United States, we may feel that there is no cause for panic and still less for despair. The political emancipation of women has made immense strides toward complete realization in the English-speaking countries on both sides of the Atlantic. Every victory scored by either of us helps the other. The latest honors are with America. We do not grudge them; but hope soon to vie with them.

A WAY OUT OF THE CANAL BLUNDER: REPEAL THE EXEMPTION

Any one who knows how little consideration is given to the preparation of political platforms can readily understand how both the Democratic and the Progressive parties were “committed” to the blunder of advocating the exemption of our coastwise shipping from the tolls to be charged for the use of the Panama Canal. It is this sort of inside arrangement of party policies--which usually, in the last hours of fatigue, restlessness, and excitement, there is never time to discuss on their merits--that has cast discredit on platforms and has justified many a candidate in disregarding or modifying a given “plank.” The overwhelming judgment of our people, as reflected in the press, that nothing is so important to us as a strict observance of our plighted faith,--just as nothing is so important to a merchant as his credit and reputation for honorable dealing,--shows how easy it is for half a dozen men in a hotel parlor, at the suggestion of some “good fellow,” to lead a convention to the indorsement of a disastrous policy.

To claim that we have not broken our pledge that there shall be no discrimination in the tolls and conditions when we thus favor our own coastwise trade, as against that of Canada, Mexico, and Colombia,--each with an Atlantic and a Pacific coast,--simply does not rise to the dignity of a quibble. Already by misrepresentation of the sense of fair-dealing which pervades American commercial life, incalculable injury has been done to our standing abroad--an injury which cannot be measured in money. After all our honorable diplomacy--the return of the Boxer indemnity, the open door policy in the Far East, and the strict observance of our promise to withdraw from Cuba, which foreign sneerers at America said we never would observe, “and never meant to observe”--it is shameful to have to drop to a lower plane of national conduct.

As if our cup of humiliation were not already full, it is argued that we are at liberty to refuse to submit the question of the breach of the Panama Treaty to the Hague Tribunal, if Great Britain should make the appeal. “_Nicht zwei dumme streiche für eins_” (Not two stupid strokes for one), says Lessing’s character in “Minna von Barnhelm.” Unless we desire to become the welsher of the nations, it is time that the good faith of the people should find an adequate expression in the good faith of the Government. All the money saved (to whom?) in tolls in a hundred years by the exemption could not compensate for the loss in money--not to reckon honor--which will result from the loss of credit and of great commercial opportunities all over the world. A strange way, indeed, to promote American commerce!

But there remains for us another chance--or will, if Great Britain shall a little longer pursue her friendly and forbearing course of waiting for our public opinion to assert itself. _The coastwise exemption should be repealed._ And, our obligations aside, why should we enter upon a policy of subsidizing our ships just at the time when apparently we are giving up the policy of subsidizing our manufactures? Are we never to get away from the inequality of privilege, that has already corrupted the sources of government by the “vicious circle,” creating and feeding by legislation agencies whose natural interest it thus becomes to destroy the principle of equality? Why subsidize ships any more than subsidize railways, or newspapers, or authorship? But if we _must_ subsidize our ships, let it be done outright, in bills for that purpose, and not through the violation of the plain words of a solemn treaty.

Not only should the exemption be repealed, but, if we are to recover the ground that has been lost, it should be done in the first week of the December session of Congress. We feel sure that President Taft, whose misgivings tinctured his message of assent, now that the Canal bill has provided for a _modus operandi_, would not interpose his veto to the sober second thought of Congress. If the repeal is not accomplished, and if we refuse the appeal to The Hague, the great cause of Arbitration--the substitute for war--will be set back for unreckonable years. And it is the championship of Arbitration, together with his far-sighted and consistent defense and extension of the Merit System, which will give the President his highest claim to the respect of posterity. The object of the latter is to keep politicians from gambling with the resources of office; the object of the former is to prevent governments from gambling with the lives of men.

Should the repeal not be promptly made, it will become the duty of the people to organize to bring it about. We much mistake the temper of the country if within another six months its servants do not remove this blot in the national escutcheon.

WANTED: STRAIGHT THINKING ABOUT MILITANT SUFFRAGISTS

APROPOS OF THE RENEWAL OF VIOLENCE IN ENGLAND

One of the startling signs of the times is the recrudescence of violence among the militant suffragists in England. The physical attacks by women upon members of the government, including the hurling of a hatchet at the Prime Minister’s party; the attempt to set fire to a theater in which he was about to make an address, and other outrages, are in themselves a sufficiently deplorable symptom of lawless impulses, with which the government, as it was obliged, has dealt promptly and vigorously. As we have recognized in previous articles, this course of action has been disavowed in England by other prominent bodies of suffragists, who deserve honor for their refusal to be deflected from their “appeal to reason” to a policy which can only end in disaster. In this number of ~The Century~ we give place to an article by Mrs. Fawcett, President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, of Great Britain, written at our request for a disavowal of this policy. If, besides the editorials in the New York “Evening Post,” there has been any similar official disavowal in America, it has escaped the attention of one careful reader of the daily news. Already many men in this country must be asking themselves whether it is wise to add to the electorate a body of voters who do not see the perilous influence of tolerating such actions--the influence not only upon women, but upon other impressionable classes having a real or fancied grievance.

And now comes another test of the wisdom and patriotism of these ladies. Before these lines shall be published, Mr. and Mrs. Pethick Lawrence, two convicted lawbreakers of England, are to be honored by a reception by the National Woman Suffrage Association in New York, as Mrs. Pankhurst was received at Carnegie Hall after a similar conviction. We cannot conceal our sympathy with any person willing to suffer for opinion’s sake, but in these instances the punishment was inflicted not for opinion, but for deliberate violation of the elementary principles of civilized government--by the destruction of property (usually of unoffending persons) and the creation of public disorder. Of what use is it for conservative agencies to address themselves to the discouragement of lynching in the South, or in Pennsylvania, or of hired assassination in New York City, or the lawlessness of capital or of labor, or the lawlessness of brutal students, fashionable smugglers, bribed officials, or “fixed” juries, when the sentiment of so large and estimable a part of the community as the advocates of woman suffrage--teachers of the young--fail to see their responsibility toward their followers and the public? The defense that “no class has ever obtained its rights except by violence” is both false and insidious, and sets an example which will rise to plague the women themselves if they ever obtain a measure of responsible power. Deeper even than this vicious idea is the world-old delusion--which has its strongest exponent in politics--that the end justifies the means. The drift toward the employment of this standard is a hard blow to those who believe that women are to show us a more excellent way in government.

Admitting that this policy of terrorizing one’s opponents is valuable as advertising a movement, it seems never to have occurred to the advocates of woman suffrage that as effective a presentation of their cause could have been obtained without violence. Ruskin said that war would cease in Europe if on the declaration of hostilities Englishwomen would put on mourning. Ingenuity certainly could devise some form of _réclame_ more worthy than the precipitation of delicately minded young women into the program of a New York vaudeville theater. Something must be allowed to the instinctive protest of human nature that _everything_ shall not be thrown into the melting-pot of agitation.

THE NEW WAY OF FINANCING A CAMPAIGN

A NOTE OF POLITICAL HEALTH AND PROGRESS

We called slaveholding and Mormon polygamy “twin relics of barbarism,” persisting in our modern civilization, and we put an end to them long ago. We have now made an end of those twin evils of our politics, the spoils system and secret campaign funds. Ten years of agitation put the merit system into our laws, the movement for publicity of campaign contributions, actively urged on after 1904, became effective in less than six years. The Federal act bears date of June 25, 1910. The spoils system and the secret campaign fund have the likeness of twins. Both are a fraud upon the people, both are illegitimate devices for perpetuating party power, both are indefensible save by frankly and cynically immoral arguments.

Perhaps the greater evil of the two, as a betrayal of the interests of the people, is the acceptance by campaign committees of large gifts of money from persons or corporations who expect, and who have usually received, much more than the worth of their money in legislative favors or valuable privilege. There have been many indiscreet revelations of the theory and practical working of the system. Indignantly protesting that the highly protected manufacturing interests had been too niggardly in their giving, one politician gave instructions to “fry the fat” out of them; and it is notorious that in the field of tariff legislation the covenant between the party in power and the corporations that gave bountifully to keep it in power was faithfully kept. The hand that gave the fund guided the pen that wrote the schedules. It is equally notorious that with these great sums the suffrage was corrupted. In one of the States where directions were given to marshal the “floaters” in “blocks of five,” a distinguished beneficiary of that process humorously admitted the efficiency of “soap” in achieving the victory. It was bad, wholly bad; in a republic no political evil could be much worse.

The completeness of the reform is astonishing. The statute enacted two years ago and amended last year commands campaign committees to keep accurate accounts of receipts and expenditures, and sworn detailed statement of contributions received, with contributors’ names and the objects for which the money was spent, must be filed with the Clerk of the House of Representatives fifteen days before the day of election and every sixth day thereafter; thirty days after election a final statement must be so filed. The statements are open for inspection and publication.

This law of publicity has been complied with in this campaign with such alacrity that two of the party committees “rushed into print” with their statements of contributions more than a month in advance of the date fixed by the statute. The Democratic committee gave out the names and the figures on September 9, and on September 10 the statement of the Progressive party was given out.

It was then that the public suddenly became aware that this Presidential campaign is unlike any other in our recent history. The first striking fact observed was that the total of the contributions was pitifully meager compared with the royal profusion with which, according to the prevailing belief, former campaign committees have been put in funds. The Wilson and Marshall Committee acknowledged the receipt of $175,000 up to the date of publication, and there were only three gifts as large as ten thousand dollars; the Roosevelt and Johnson Committee had received $55,199, and the largest contributions were two of $15,000 each. Comparison was at once made with the Republican campaign fund of 1904, amounting to $1,900,000 as stated in testimony and with old-time individual contributions of $50,000 and $100,000. The total of the Republican fund in 1896 is not accurately known, but it was certainly much larger than in 1904.

The second point of unlikeness of this campaign to all others within any man’s memory is the fact that the fortunes of all three candidates are committed to the management of men who are amateurs in “big politics.” The “Zach” Chandlers, the Mark Hannas, the Arthur Pue Gormans, where are they? If these men have successors in our day, they are watching and waiting, it may be; certainly they are not in the strife, they are not at the heads of the committees, they are not the chief men in the work.

It means that our politics, our political campaign methods, have in good faith been changed and reformed. As a part of what in the broad sense, not in any party sense, we may call the progressive movement, this change is of impressive significance. The machines and the bosses may devise ways to retain much of their old power under the conditions of what is called “direct government” of the people in the States, but now that their dominance is destroyed in respect to the great quadrennial contest of the parties, it is not easy to see how they can regain control. They carried on the war of politics with money; they bartered, when they could, government policies for cash. We have put an end to all that. The qualities of the candidates, the merits of the argument, the decision of the people for or against promised measures and policies, are now to be determining. That is as it should be, it is the ideal way, in a government by the people. For a government by the “interests” and the politicians the old way was ideal.

In very truth the publicity of campaign contributions is a reform of far-reaching vitality and importance, and it is immensely gratifying that it has been ungrudgingly accepted by those upon whom this ordinance of great self-denial has been imposed. But the people, the voters themselves, must understand that their emancipation brings its duties and responsibilities. It costs a great deal of money properly to enlighten the electorate upon the issues of a Presidential campaign, as it is of the very essence of good government that the voter should make his choice with understanding. Knowledge is necessary, it is to his interest that he have it, and he should pay the cost of putting it within his reach. The corporations and the “interests” have been relieved of this burden of expense. Let the men of the parties assume it, willingly, for their own benefit, for the benefit of all. Campaign committees must spend money, yet if at the close of the campaign they are left with heavy debts, it will not be long before we lapse into the old, bad conditions. Campaigns can be “financed” with the money of the voters. A multitude of small individual contributions will fill the campaign chest, and candidates and party will be under no obligations save to the people, and those it will be their highest duty to fulfil.

IF LINCOLN COULD RETURN

(FIFTY YEARS AFTER EMANCIPATION)

On Sunday, September 22, in negro churches everywhere, men and women of dark skin celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the first Emancipation Proclamation. It was an occasion which might well have been made a day of heart-searching, to ask ourselves whether, in our treatment of the negro, the nation as a whole is honoring the memory of Lincoln himself, and of those who labored, fought, and died to abolish slavery. Are we, as a nation, dealing fairly with the negro? Or is “The Independent” correct when it declares that of all our ninety millions there are none to-day so oppressed as the race that Lincoln freed?

In this number of ~The Century~ we group examples of the work of four members of the race,--in prose, poetry, art, and musical composition, the first being a paper of entire authoritativeness and singular moderation of tone. In it Dr. Washington, with the dauntless faith and courage which have carried him so far, sets forth his answer to the question whether the American negro is having a fair chance. Discouragement he will not admit; he fixes his eyes ever upon the hopeful signs. When he goes abroad it seems to him the working-classes of Europe are worse off than our own colored people, whose accessions from abroad are proof to him that the negro fares nowhere else so well.

That Dr. Washington serves a useful purpose in ever presenting the cheerful side, is obvious. But he who fifty years after Emancipation would stop there would see but one side of the question. The shadows upon the race which the head of Tuskegee glides over so lightly lie heavily upon ever-growing numbers of intellectual colored people, who are moved but little by figures of increased negro farm holdings, by statistics about negro grocers, lawyers, physicians, and teachers. Grateful as their hearts may be that they are to-day in possession of their own bodies, they regard the future with troubled eyes.

Looking upon their children they ask with panic fear if these are to be the children of the ghettos now being established, set apart as though leprous, with one avenue of advancement after another closed to them, denied the participation in government guaranteed to them by law, and in some States put beyond the pale of law. They read that the American Bar Association has virtually drawn the color line. They read almost every week of men of their race burned at the stake, North and South; of their women, done to death, ruthlessly shot out of semblance to their Maker, by the mobs that destroy them in the name of the purity of the white race! They read that even Northern communities where the mob rules, like Coatesville, Pennsylvania, and Springfield, Illinois, once the very home of Lincoln, fail to punish those who defy the laws and slay the accused or the innocent with barbarities known in no other land. They see themselves left out of account in the South by a leader of a new political party that boasts its desire for “social justice.” If their children, deprived of school by the thousands, and depressed and ignorant, without a single influence to uplift, go wrong, the imputed shame is that of the whole race. Every negro criminal becomes a living indictment of his people. Bitterest of all, they cannot defend themselves against official wrong-doing, for having only a phantom ballot in their hands, the vilest sheriff is beyond their reach. Moreover, to the injury of the whole body-politic, no adequate education through self-government is provided for them in this Republic of Lincoln.

This is the reverse of the picture and its pathos is beyond description. What would Lincoln say? Would he, if reembodied, declare that the negro, for all his progress, is having a fair chance, North or South, to-day?

ON THE RELATIVE CLAIMS OF SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

_To One who Thinks Women “Movement-Mad”_

_Dear Helen_:

A cowardly fear of being funny silenced me last night, but, now, refreshed by sleep and by your absence, knowing that you are well on your road, I mount my slow nag, and, armored to be dull, come pricking after. I know that words are creatures of chance, subject to jeopardy from all the winds that blow, and that in writing I am only increasing the hazard of misunderstanding, “harnessing for a yet more perilous adventure,” but despite this I follow soberly behind, your own words upon my lips.

You said, in part, you may recall, that our little group, and especially the women among us, are movement-mad; that peaceful, esthetic conversation has been done to death by furious talk on wrongs and reforms; that the amenities of civilized society, so you said, have fallen beneath the ax of chop-logic; that even at dinners we women grow red and shrill over astonishing topics--eugenics, political nominees, prison menus, and woman suffrage; that art, “the world’s sweet inn,” has become a house of brawlers; that to speak of dancing is to bring up in a dance-hall, and to discuss a play is to become entangled in a wreckage of commandments. All of Pan’s gay world is silenced, you declared, shut off with a cordon of linked question marks; that the very laughter in our throats has become brazen and controversial--the derisive laughter of the Hebrew Scriptures; that, oh, dreadful climax, you will open your purse to no more reforms, unless it be to a Society for the Reformation of Manners.

When you quote Falstaff’s plaint that “It were better to be eaten to death with rust than scoured to nothing with perpetual motion,” I understand what you mean--that is my misfortune in debate. But are you really enamoured of rust? You, who would keep all talk in low relief, sweet, level, and cool as the heads on a Greek frieze, are you not turning from a world that is alive and alight to wander in a land of shades?

Esthetic ideals were shaped for us by the centuries that lie between us and Myron. What wonder that talk moves smoothly upon such age-worn ways! Slave-owning Greeks and subtle Italians wrought out, in sweat and toil, arts that were old when a social conscience was an amœba. In sweat and strife men and women are blazing new trails to-day; and the overcoming of inertia still generates heat. But, once more, something comes forth, shining, from the lustration of fire.

Smile down upon us from your tranquil bleacher! It is quite true that we are ravished by the dazzling, many-sided iridescence of what we take for a new Truth, hailing its radiance with our uncouth cries. We buffet hotly the ideas that each is driving toward his goal, but when, out of the rush and turmoil, some one scores a touchdown the whole field cheers.

When a new country is discovered--though it be a desert--the explorer plants his flag with a shout; and there is as high authority, in the authentic tribune of men’s hearts, for our passion as for your calm. The “lark of aspiration” must sing as it mounts.

A modern master of friendship has said that, after all, there are only two real subjects of conversation--love and conduct. As love is best in tête-à-tête, that leaves us morals. Thinking of it in cold blood, it seems as though we might be calmer talkers, but when have morals not been associated with heat, here or hereafter? The part of your charge that I find strangest is that this noisy super-heatedness, that you impute to us, is a new evil. Where is your memory, Girl? Mine takes up the thread about the year that you were born, when people were still talking back over the questionable morality of one set of men freeing the slaves of another set, and of the political right of the Southern States to secede. I see a room, a hollow square of books, the air blue with smoke, torn by lightning-jags of talk. Voices--raised voices, dear Lady--talked of Predestination and Free Will. They talked as we poor weaklings of this Laodicean age may never hope to talk, hurling Eternal Damnation at each others’ heads and imputations of blasphemy, in horrid whispers. Goethe’s Elective Affinities and the doctrine of one Thomas Paine were discussed; Darwin, in relation to the osteoplastic romance of Eve. Apostolic Succession, Infant Damnation, Predestination--these are some of the live-wires of another day. I never hear the echo of raised voices, down the long vista of my past, without realizing that real talk is going forward--morals, preferably with a dash of love.

To-day, we, true children of those senior wranglers, have inescapably, in our blood, the passion for moral research; “the invisible masters that reign in our innermost cells” have predetermined our choice. The names of all the protagonists have changed; the battleground has shifted from skyey metaphysics to the slum street; from Infant Damnation to Certified Milk for Babies; but we, too, are doing battle for our realities. In the hospitals and the settlement houses are the children and grandchildren of our old circuit-riders and militant bishops. The children of those who warred for righteousness still seek and serve.

Your quarrel is not with our little group of noisy talkers; your quarrel, Madam, is with the leaven of the world, that froths and foams and stirs because it is working. In the stormy schools of religious controversy--in that old, warm talk on morals, when the souls of men were the stake--we learned that we are our brothers’ keepers, and that idea, once generated, will be conserved, generation by generation, and the force of it will not be lost. As they strove to insure to men eternal life, their children strive that men may inherit the earth.

Our contention, yours and mine, is the old Hellenic-Hebraic clash of ideals.

“Beauty and Light!” you cry.

“Justice and Right!” comes the response.

We are both right, but my right is deeper and more elemental than yours. Yours exists for a few, happy, chosen spirits; mine for the whole, wide travailing world. Yours rests upon mine; mine does not rest upon yours.

“Rest!” you jeer. “You people never rest, and you let no one else rest.”

“‘Restfulness,’” I cry, with inky vivacity, “Stevenson told us long ago that ‘restfulness is a quality for cattle.’”

“Ah, Chantecler! Chantecler!” I hear you murmur, “when will you learn the secret of the dawn.”

Well, you see I have given you the last word, at least.

As ever yours,
_Louise Herrick Wall_.

AFTER-DINNER STORIES

BY SYLVESTER MENLO

BEARDING WHISTLER IN HIS DEN

The following anecdote of Whistler was told by the painter himself.

One day when Whistler was absorbingly busy in painting the portrait of a prominent American gentleman, a ring was heard at his studio bell, and his man-servant appeared with the cards of a certain rich American lady and her husband, saying they would like very much to see him. He sent word that he was closely occupied with a sitter, and begged them to excuse him. But the servant brought back word that the lady had come from America for the distinct purpose of having him paint her portrait, and that it was necessary for her to have an interview. He immediately sent word down that interviews could be had only by appointment, and he regretted that he could not receive her. But despite this rebuff, the lady and her escort succeeded in passing the guard, and were soon heard mounting the stairs; whereupon Whistler said to his sitter:

“Oh, Jack, for heaven’s sake, do go and send her away!”

At the top of the landing the sitter found the lady and her husband. He expostulated with her on her intrusion, but was unable to make any impression upon her, and so reported to the painter, who finally came out with a handful of wet brushes between his fingers and advanced upon the enemy with a determined manner, and, as he went toward her, pushing his hand in front of him, to the imminent danger of spoiling a very beautiful costume arranged for an effective portrait.

It was very amusing to see Whistler punctuating his remarks with the jerks of his hand in which he had put two or three pencils to illustrate the situation.

“My dear Madam,” he said [forward gesture], “you must know [gesture repeated] that an artist [another gesture] cannot be interrupted in his work [deprecatory gesture], and I must ask you kindly to desist from this intrusion [forward gesture]. It is impossible for me to make arrangements [gesture] except by appointment, and I am obliged to ask you [gesture] to be so good as to excuse me.” As he approached her, the lady was obliged to retire a few inches, until she reached the top of the landing, when Whistler, seeing that she acknowledged her discomfiture, bade her good morning as she took her leave. The painter did not mention the lady’s name.

On the conclusion of the anecdote, one of his auditors said, “You must have a great many such experiences with the _nouveaux riches_, Mr. Whistler.”

“Ah, yes, ah, yes,” he said; “and it takes them a long time to grow up to the portraits we make of them.”

“RULES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN”

In the early days of a certain club of New York, when it was rather harder sledding for the club than it is at the present time, in a meeting of the council the question came up as to the arrears of members’ dues, and the treasurer reported that one man was particularly recreant in this regard. It was in the winter, and the club was then maintaining throughout the day and evening beautifully heated and lighted quarters. At this time the only person in the club who frequented it every day was this delinquent, who, in addition to doing a large portion of his writing there, was accustomed to make considerable inroads upon the stationery of the club for home consumption.

At the meeting of the council referred to, there was protest against this state of affairs, and a determination was manifest to put an end to it, and after discussion the secretary was instructed to notify the member in question that his name had been dropped from the rolls of the club.

The question then arose whether there was anybody else who was in arrears, whereupon the treasurer reported that this was true of another member.

“Who can that be? Let us make an example of them both,” remarked one member, bringing his fist down on the table for emphasis. The reply was that it was Mr. X----, the poet.

“Oh, heavens!” replied another. “We can’t let X---- go. He’s too important to the club.”

Whereupon the resolution was amended to read as follows: “Resolved, that the secretary be instructed to drop the name of Mr. Q---- from the rolls of the club for non-payment of dues, and to retain the name of Mr. X---- for the same reason.”

SERVICEABLE FRENCH

Some years ago a young American woman, Miss G----, met at a Paris pension a compatriot, a spinster. One evening the conversation turned upon the study of languages. Miss G----, though she had lived some time in Paris, expressed an indifference to acquiring French, and said, with an air of concluding the matter, that on the whole she thought a knowledge of French took away very much from the feeling of strangeness which one had in the country, to which Miss G---- warmly assented.

“But, Miss S----,” she said, “you certainly know _some_ French; otherwise it would be very difficult for you to find your way about the city.”

“Oh, yes,” responded the older lady, “I know some French--quite enough for all practical purposes.”

“For instance,” pursued Miss G----, who herself spoke French very beautifully, “what do you do when you wish a _cocher_ to drive faster?”

“Oh,” was the response, “that’s easy enough. I simply rise, poke him in the back with my parasol, and”--shaking her hands, palms forward, nervously--“I say, ‘Rapidilly, rapidilly!’ Oh, I know French enough for that.”

THE PLAINT OF THE SOREHEAD

BY JAMES D. CORROTHERS

’Twa’n’t ’zackly de ack o’ “de Pahty,”
’Twus slidin’ too quick f’om de fence,
Wid an appetite ovahly h’ahty--
An’ _dis_ am de quinsequence!
Nothin’ “comfo’tin’” visible!
Laud! but it’s suttainly tough!--
Mis’able, mis’able, mis’able!--
Mis’able enough!

I worked foh “de Pahty” last ’lection;
An’ winked at de Dimocrats, too,
Thinkin’ I’d “make a collection”
F’om _one_ uv ’em, sho!--wouldn’t you?
But heah I sets, sad an’ commis’able--
I _tell_ you dey’s treated me rough!
Mis’able, mis’able, mis’able!--
Mis’able, sho’ ’nough!

APE OWE ’EM

BY DEEMS TAYLOR

When fur stews can this sill leer I’m,
Toot rye tomb ache theme e’en ink Lear,
Youth inked wood butt bee weigh sting thyme;
Use eh, “It’s imp lean on scents, shear!”

Gnome attar; Anna lies align!
Nation mice lender verse says knot--
Fork rip tick poet real Ike mine,
How Aaron weal, demesnes allot.

THEN AND NOW

BY CAROLYN WELLS

When my jokes appeal to the editors’ mind,
And they send me word they’ve kept ’em;
I am so glad if they’re the kind
Who pay when they accept ’em.

Months later, when in print I find
My charming lucubration;
I am so glad if they’re the kind
Who pay on publication.

“Oh! Jack, I’m so sorry you’ve hurt your arm.”]

“WHEN IMMORTAL MEETS IMMORTAL”

A PROPHETIC CARTOON. BY JOHN T. McCUTCHEON

(Both Mr. Woodrow Wilson and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt are members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.)

This drawing, made for the Chicago “Tribune,” before the nomination of either candidate, is here reprinted by permission.]

LIMERICKS

TEXT AND PICTURES BY OLIVER HERFORD

XVII--THE FINANCIER FOX

There once was a plausible fox
Who explained that he dabbled in “stocks,”
But they found out one day
“Live stock” was his “lay,”
When he “cornered” ten prize Plymouth Rocks.

XVIII--THE FASTIDIOUS YAK

There was once a fastidious yak
Who refused to eat hay from a stack.
“A haystack,” said he,
“Looks so very like me!”
(The haystack’s the one at the back.)

THE DE VINNE PRESS, NEW YORK

How +did+ you make this pie so delicious?

“Why it was easy enough. I tried the new way that I found in my Libby’s recipe booklet. Here it is--”

=Pumpkin Pie=: 1½ cups cooked and strained pumpkin, 2 eggs, ¾
cup sugar, ¼ cup molasses, ½ tablespoonful cinnamon, ½ tablespoonful
ginger, ¼ teaspoonful salt, 1 cup (½ can) Libby’s Evaporated Milk,
with 1 cupful water. Mix pumpkin, molasses, sugar and spices
together. Add the mixed milk and water, then add the eggs thoroughly
beaten. Mix well and put into deep pie tins lined with pastry. Bake
45 minutes in moderate oven.

_Libby’s_ Evaporated
Milk

For pies and all baking, for soups, coffee, tea or cocoa Libby’s milk gives an added richness and a delicious flavor.

Libby’s milk is evaporated in clean, sanitary condenseries, located in the heart of the greatest dairy regions in the world. It is always pure and when open will keep sweet longer than raw milk.

Buy Libby’s milk for convenience and satisfaction. It’s the brand you can trust.

_Send for a copy of Libby’s Milk Recipe Booklet_

Libby, M^c.Neill & Libby
Chicago

EL Principe de Gales

Havana
Cigars
]