Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

It is those schools backed by the churches and benevolent societies of the North that are doing the most of the work of preparing teachers among the colored people for the colored people. The very best of the more than seventeen thousand colored teachers have learned whatever they know in these schools. Most of the Southern State governments have recognized the necessity of preparing colored teachers, and make annual appropriations to carry on this work. A few States have established schools of their own; generally they make appropriations to some of the best of the schools established by others.

The great and crying need in the work of education among the people is better teachers in their common schools. They can not be prepared in a day or a year; for it takes much money and much time. The training schools are without endowments, and their patrons are unable to pay more than the lowest tuition fees. If these schools—call them universities, colleges, institutes, seminaries—what you will, are to keep going at their present rate, to say nothing of improvement, white people must furnish the money, for the best of reasons; the negroes have not money to do this sort of work. Most of this money will have to come from Northern pockets, if it comes at all. The State of New York is worth more in property returned for taxation than all the Southern States together—leaving out Missouri, counted in the census of 1880 among “Western States.”

THE JOHN F. SLATER FUND

Begins to do its blessed work. This fund is dedicated to the work of “Uplifting the lately emancipated population of the Southern States and their posterity, by conferring on them the blessings of Christian education,” and it seeks to accomplish this result by “the training of teachers among the people requiring to be taught.” This fund works through existing institutions; it does not found new schools; there are already more good and deserving schools than it can help. Many times the sum this fund affords could be wisely used.

There is not space in this article to discuss the question, but my opinion may be stated: It is necessary that the United States government should aid the States to make their public schools more efficient. Whatever may be true of other sections, the Southern States, owing to the facts of their history and to conditions now existing, are not able to do the work that is upon them.

As to the sentiment in these States on the subject of negro education, it may be said in brief: The outcry of small village papers does not always even reflect the sentiment of the people, and there are certain facts that indicate that the work of educating the negroes will go on with less and less hindrance. Three such facts I mention in closing this article: (1) The duty and necessity of educating the negro has been recognized by every representative church in the South. (2) This necessity is recognized in the educational system of every Southern State. (3) No man who believes he has any political or educational “future,” any longer opposes, under his proper name, the education of his negro fellow citizens.

* * * * *

Dress changes, but we are not to suppose on that account that the make of the body changes also. Politeness or rudeness, knowledge or ignorance, more or less of a certain degree of guilelessness and simplicity, a serious or playful humor; these are but the outer crust of a man, and may all change; but the heart changes not, and the whole of man is in the heart. One age is ignorant, but the fashion of being learned may come; we are all moved by self-interest, but the fashion of being disinterested will never come. Amidst the countless myriads of creatures born in the space of a hundred years, nature may perhaps produce two or three dozen of rational beings whom she must scatter over the world, and you can readily imagine that they are never found any where in such large numbers as to set the fashion of virtue and uprightness.—_Fontenelle._

MAN OF LEARNING, TELL ME SOMETHING.

By MARGARET MEREDITH.

I wonder if men could not be persuaded to alter their style of conversation with girls, to talk to us as they talk to men?

We have a feeling that learned young men are the dullest of talkers; not because they talk weightily; Oh, no! because they talk so lightly, and lightness is not their forte.

A diligent student, a very cormorant, perhaps, of knowledge, dons a white necktie and sallies forth, and resolutely leaves behind for the evening every material he has wherewith to make himself agreeable. He is not witty, he is too busy to be a gossip, he is too little in company to learn an easy jog of commonplace or compliment. So he sits on a sofa, and the girl makes some opening remark, to which he replies with studied interest; and at the pause she magnetically feels that it is best to make a longer remark this time. If she were talking to a lad, she might drift into expressing some of her real ideas, and find profit and pleasure in airing them; but for the amusement of this young savant, by no means. Still, at his next turn to speak, or the next, she has come suggestively near some subject worth talking of; if he were with a man he would instantly plunge in, and in five minutes they would be deep in discussion or description, sharpening their wits by every sentence, fixing what they have read, shaping their crude opinions, thoroughly enjoying each other; and for this they need not be equals in cultivation, nor altogether equals in mind.

Why should it be so different when talking with a woman? There is no reason, but habit. One says, “People dislike to talk shop; the busy scholar wants a rest.” On the contrary, most people, I think, would rather talk shop than anything else. If it is their life interest and their strong point, they have so much more to say. The truth is, they fear that the listener will object, and so “in company” they avoid it. I wager the listener would be delighted.

I do not write so much to those who can get up at will a brilliant flow of mere scintillation. That is a scarce enough article to be valuable. Yet they might use it occasionally on sense as well as on nonsense, and make themselves all the more notably entertaining.

I once knew a grave professional man who was said to be both clever and cultivated, but for me there seemed no possible way to enjoy him. His visits were the most empty occasions. He was “a desirable person to be visited by,” but he was unendurable; though he did not fail to be politely attentive in more ways than one. I was glad he was going away. Just then a mutual friend came on the scene, who had views on this matter. I know she gave him the benefit of them, as well as if she had told me; for such an amazing change I never saw. The passive sitter waked up, the bore became a charming talker, and all because he had taken his own permission to be agreeable in his natural way. I was so sorry when he left town!

That instance of transformation is what inspires my appeal. The thing would seem grounded and settled, incapable of cure, but what one exhortation can accomplish has been proved.

And it is a case in which the butterfly may well spring full-colored from the chrysalis, for the stuff that talk is made of is all there; not repartee, of course, or always brilliant expression for one’s thoughts and facts; but thoughts and facts very simply used make an evening world-wide different from a succession of laboriously-framed sentences carefully intended to be about something in which the man does not take any interest, and the woman sees he does not. Can we wonder that the sand-man has to be struggled with many a time by both parties? Young boys do not blink with sleep under your very eyes; but full-grown men often do, and largely because they insist on pursuing at thirty-five about the same topics of conversation that they used at eighteen.

Don’t you, Mr. Dry-as-dust, want to turn over a new leaf? My opportunities of learning are limited, perhaps, while yours are constant. If I am to spend an hour, or two or three, with you, will not you give me some advantage from your well-furnished store-house? If I do not respond then possibly you may stand excused, and never again run the risk of talking over my head.

But give me one fair trial, and see if we are not “better company” and better friends ever afterward.

HIBERNATION.

By the REV. J. G. WOOD, M.A.

The hedgehog, like the bat, is carnivorous.

Toward the end of autumn it looks out for some retired spot, a perfectly dry cavity in the ground or in the rock being the favorite resort. Here it gathers together a large quantity of dry moss, leaves, grass, etc., covers itself with them, rolls itself into a ball, and sinks into the hibernating lethargy.

It is rather remarkable that a hibernating animal is much more sensitive to a slight touch than to general handling. If, for example, a single hair of a hibernating bat or a single quill of a hibernating hedgehog be raised, the creature gives a quick start, and takes a few breaths before relapsing into lethargy. Yet a bat may be sunk under water, or have a thermometer tube passed into its stomach, without being awakened.

When a hibernating bat is sunk under water of the same temperature as that of its body, it does not even attempt to breathe. A similar experiment was tried with a hedgehog, and after it had been under water for twenty-one minutes, one tiny bubble of air rose to the surface. I need scarcely say that if the animal had been awake, it would have been drowned in less than a fourth of the time.

For the bat, no food can be found until the warm weather returns, and so the hibernation is unbroken for at least five months. But, though food be almost entirely withdrawn from the hedgehog, some nutriment remains, and therefore the animal is so constituted that it can discover and consume the food which has been provided for it.

This food chiefly consists of snails, which are themselves hibernators, and which during the winter months conceal themselves so effectually that they are seldom detected except by their two great wintry foes, the thrush and the hedgehog.

The hedgehog, not possessing so wide a range of hibernating temperature as the bat, which actually “hibernates” daily for a short time even during the hottest summers, is roused by an hour or two of warm sunshine such as we often experience about February. Awakened by the warmth, the hedgehog unrolls itself, creeps out of its refuge, and trundles (I know no better word to describe its peculiar pace) away in search of food. Taught by instinct, it is sure to come upon one of the strongholds of the snail, eats as many as it needs, returns to its home, and sleeps until awakened in a similar manner.

Then we have the vegetable-eating squirrel, which is a partial hibernator.

During the later weeks of autumn, the squirrel may be seen in the act of making provision for the winter. In the first place it collects a vast store of fallen leaves, moss, twigs, and similar materials, and with them constructs its winter nest.

Squirrels have two distinct kinds of nest, one for the winter and the other for the summer. Both nests are of considerable size, and both are so well concealed that to detect them is a very difficult task. The summer nest is comparatively light in texture, and is placed near the ends of lofty boughs, where it is hidden by the leaves. Moreover, its position renders it almost unassailable, as the branch on which it is built would not even endure the weight of a small boy. In the winter, when the leaves are off the trees, the nests are very conspicuous, and in the New Forest, where I gave some time to watching the habits of the squirrel, they are exceedingly numerous.

In fact, the squirrels of the New Forest swarm in such numbers, and do so much damage to the young twigs of the trees, that many hundreds must be shot annually, just as is the case with rabbits. They are always shot just before hibernating, because, as they put on new robes for the winter, their skins fetch the best prices. Moreover, the animals become fat, as is the case with all hibernators, and so their flesh is in good condition for the table. Squirrel-pie is a well-known luxury in some parts of England, and is far superior to rabbit-pie, as it is free from the peculiar flavor which attaches itself to the rabbit, and to many persons is exceedingly repulsive.

The winter nest is a very large one, containing at least four or five times as much material as would serve for a summer’s nest. Instead of being placed at the end of a bough, it is always set in the hollow caused by the junction of several large branches with the trunk. The exterior is so skilfully formed, that when the tree is viewed from below, even the most practised eyes will often fail to detect the nest, large as it is.

The amount of material which a squirrel employs in this nest is really wonderful. I have taken out of a single nest armful after armful of leaves, until quite a large mound was raised at the foot of the tree, and I should think that there was enough material to fill two large wheelbarrows, even if it were pressed down closely.

I may here mention that the nest of the squirrel is known in some parts of England by the name of “drey,” and in others by that of “cage.” The latter term is employed in the New Forest.

The house being ready, next comes the task of laying up a store of food. This consists chiefly of nuts, which the animal chooses with marvelous sagacity, or rather, instinct. No one ever yet found an unsound or worm-eaten nut in a squirrel’s store. The animal does not rely on a single storehouse, but hides its treasures here and there within easy range of its nest. Many nuts it buries, and owing to this habit, nut-trees are apt to spring up in unexpected places, for, if the weather should be exceptionally severe, the squirrel awakens but seldom from its winter sleep, and so does not need the store which it has hidden. Or, it may die or be killed after it has laid up its food, and so the buried nuts will take root and produce trees.

A remarkable instance of this fact occurred in the grounds of Walton Hall, belonging to the late Charles Waterton.

In former days there had been in the estate an old wooden mill. It had been disused for many years, and at last the only relic of it was the upper millstone which was left on the ground. The reader may be aware that the center of the upper stone is pierced with a tolerably large hole, through which the corn makes its way between the stones.

In the autumn of 1813, some nut-eating, hibernating animal, almost certainly a squirrel, had found this stone, and thought that the hole would make an admirable hiding-place for a nut. For some reason, the nut was never eaten, and consequently began to germinate. Mr. Waterton, who pervaded his grounds at all hours of day and night, detected the green shoot at once when it appeared in the spring of the following year. Foreseeing that the shoot, if it lived long enough to become a tree, would raise the stone from the ground, he had a fence put round it, and gave special orders for its preservation.

His prevision proved to be perfectly correct. In course of years, the little shoot became a large tree twenty-five feet in height, and bearing fine crops of fruit annually, and Mr. Edmund Waterton told me that in his boyhood he had often climbed it for the purpose of procuring nuts. After the stem was large enough to fill the orifice in which it had been planted it lifted the stone, and raised it some eight or nine inches above the ground.

As might be imagined, in the course of years the pressure of the stone destroyed the bark, and stopped the circulation of the sap, so that the tree died. In order to save it from being blown down, the trunk and branches were cut away some feet above the stone. On my last visit to Walton Hall, shortly before Mr. Waterton’s death, the stone was still suspended above the ground, and as a memorial of so remarkable a result of hibernation, I made a careful sketch of it, which was published by Messrs. Macmillan.

It is also noticeable as an example of the slow, silent, and almost irresistible power of vegetation. Even the soft and pulpy mushroom has been known to raise a flat, heavy paving-stone fairly off the ground. Had the mushrooms been allowed to grow, and the paving-stone laid on them, it would have crushed them under its weight. But the vital powers of growth are so tremendous, even when acting upon so feeble a medium, that they performed a feat which would have been thought impossible had it not been witnessed.

In some parts of South America, where the growth of vegetation is surprisingly rapid, there used to be, and may be still, a mode of inflicting capital punishment by the power of vegetation. We all know the sharply-pointed and bayonet-like leaves of certain aloes. The victim was simply fastened to the ground over a spot where an aloe was just starting from the earth, and before a day had gone by, the leaves would grow completely through the body.

I briefly mention these examples in order to show how all nature is linked together, and that the hibernation of animals and the growth of vegetables are parts of one great system.

Owing to the manner in which the squirrel disperses his treasures, we can not tell the amount of the store required by each animal, but in Northern America we find one which gives the needful information. This is the chipping squirrel, chipmunk, so called from its cry. Its scientific name is _Tamias Lysteri_.

It is a little creature not larger than a two-thirds grown rat, and is very conspicuous on account of the black and yellow stripes which run along its back. Being a creature which leads a subterranean life for the greatest part of its time, it does not possess the bushy tail of the tree-inhabiting squirrels.

Its underground habitation is a most elaborate composition of galleries and chambers, so that there is plenty of space for storage. Audubon once dug up a nest inhabited by four chipping squirrels, and found in it two pecks of acorns, a quart of large nuts, rather more than two quarts of buckwheat, besides about half a pint of grass seeds and ordinary wheat. Considering that the animals would pass the greater portion of the winter months in lethargy, and would only eat at long intervals, the amount of food is really surprising.

In former days, when the red men were supreme and depended solely on hunting for their food, many a tribe has been saved from extermination for want of food in the winter time by digging up the nests of the chipping squirrel, and eating the inhabitants as well as their stores.

In the dormouse we have another instance of hibernation brought into contact with man.

This pretty little creature, which is too familiar to need description, possesses in a great degree the power of becoming fat toward the end of autumn. The ancient Romans were well aware of this fact, and had regular establishments called “gliraria” for the express purpose of fattening dormice for the table.

The dormouse makes a singularly comfortable nest for itself. It is nearly spherical and is composed externally of grass blades woven together in a very ingenious manner. The animal only leaves a small aperture, concealed by grass blades which can be pulled asunder when the inmate enters or leaves the nest, and which resume their position like the folds of a drawn curtain. I once had a remarkably fine specimen of a dormouse nest which was cut out of a hedge. The curtain of grass blades was so admirably formed that it could seldom be detected by any one who did not know the specimen.

Around, but not in this nest, the dormouse places its store of winter food, which is much of the same nature as that of the squirrel, and mostly consists of nuts. For this reason the Germans call the creature by the appropriate name of hazelmaus.

It was made in the fork of a hazel-branch, and was about four feet from the ground, so that the small branches served to strengthen as well as conceal it. The nest was exactly six inches long by three in width, and was made almost entirely of several kinds of grass, the broad-bladed sword-grass being the chief material. Interwoven with the grass-blades were sundry leaves, all hazel and maple, and none of them having been taken from the branch on which the nest was built. It is therefore possible that a dormouse may have placed the nest in Mr. Waterton’s mill-stone. I do not, however, think it probable, because there was no bush near the stone, and, as far as is known, the dormouse always stores its food close to its nest. The squirrel, however, ranges farther afield, and may often be seen in the winter-time digging through the snow, at some distance from its tree, so as to disinter the hidden food.

Another vegetable-eating hibernating rodent is the too well-known hamster (_Cricetus frumentarius_) of Northern Europe.

It is about a foot in length, but, on account of its numbers, is a most formidable enemy to the agriculturist. Even when seeking its daily food it is terribly destructive to the crops, but its worst raids are made at the end of the autumn, when it provides a store for the winter. For this purpose it excavates a deep and complicated system of burrows, in which it stores a quantity of grain so enormous that after the harvest the farmers are in the habit of digging up the hamster’s burrows and securing their stolen property.

A single hamster carried off sixty pounds of wheat for its winter store, while another had thought that a hundred weight of beans were necessary for its subsistence. The animal wakes very early from its hibernation, sometimes even in February. It does not, however, come out of its burrow at once, but remains beneath the earth until the warm weather has fairly set in.

Now we come to the bears.

I need not say that intertropical bears do not require to hibernate. Moreover of those bears which inhabit the colder climates the adult males seldom, if ever, hibernate, while the young of both sexes are very uncertain in this respect. For example, with the grizzly bear the young males and females are found at large throughout the whole of winter, and the same is the case with the polar bear. With the brown bear of Northern Europe and the black bear of North America the young animals seem to be rather capricious in hibernating.

In all cases, however, when the adult female bear is about to add to the family she prepares for hibernating. With the exception of the polar bear, who is obliged to form a most remarkable habitation, the female chooses a safe retreat long before it is required, and gradually conveys into it a large quantity of leaves, moss, and small branches, so as to make a comfortable bed.

Shortly before hibernating she becomes enormously fat, and the new fur which she puts on is quite half as long again as that of the summer raiment. Hunters, therefore, are naturally anxious to kill the bear just before hibernating.

In the first place, a fully developed winter fur, taken before it has been injured by use, will sell for twice as much money as the fur of the same animal when taken in summer or after hibernating. In the next place, the fat, which is so well-known as “bear’s-grease,” always commands a ready sale. Lastly, as bear’s meat, prepared either by freezing or smoking, forms the greatest part of winter food in many a family, it is a matter of the greatest consequence to have that meat in the best condition.

How valuable it is under such circumstances may be realized by reading the life of the old American hunter, Daniel Boone, and seeing how, when his wife and children were nearly dying of hunger and cold, he forced his way across the half-frozen river, succeeded in killing a bear, and by almost superhuman exertions transported all the meat across the river to his hut.

Supposing that the bear is not interrupted in her work, she retires to the den just before winter, and closes the entrance as well as she can.

In this place of refuge the young are born. They are at first scarcely larger than rats, but increase in size, drawing the whole of their nourishment from their mother, who takes no food during the whole of the winter and early spring. In consequence, when she and her young emerge, the latter are fat and strong, while the mother is but the shadow of her former self. Here again is a wonderful example of the many ways in which God “giveth meat to all flesh.”

When a male or young female hibernates it comes out of its refuge as fat as it was on entering it. The hibernation is so perfect that there is scarcely any waste of tissue, as is the case with the mother bear, whose young practically subsist on the store of fat which she laid up in the autumn.

The polar bear when about to become a mother is obliged to find a very different kind of refuge, as there are neither caves, hollow trees, or branches, and often there is nothing but ice as a resting-place and snow as a covering. So she depends for shelter upon the snow. After selecting a convenient snow-drift, she scrapes a hole in it, and suffers the snow to fall upon her as it will.

In that country, where even the human inhabitants are obliged to make their houses out of snow or perish, she is soon buried under many feet of snow. Her thick fur keeps the snow from contact with the skin, while the heat of her body gradually melts the snow away from around her, so that she lies in a sort of tent.

Now comes the question, ventilation. Were she alone all the time she would need no communication with the external air, as the hibernation would be perfect, and respiration would not be required. But her young, who do not hibernate, must breathe continually from the time of their birth, and she, being disturbed by them, is forced to breathe occasionally.

Now, it is found that when animals are buried under snow their warm breath continually ascends, and makes a passage into the air. The aperture is a very small one, but quite sufficient for the purpose; and even in our Scotch Highlands sheep are enabled to breathe in a similar manner when buried in the terrible snow-drifts, which are apt to overwhelm whole flocks at a time.—_London Sunday Magazine._

ZENOBIA.

By ADA IDDINGS GALE.

Midst clash of arms, she comes, and glittering spear,
Bold, bright and beautiful, her flashing eye;
Crowned, gemmed and robed in cloth of Tyrian dye.
Palmyra’s pride, unequaled far or near.
Proudly she moves and with imperious mien
Views with a sweeping glance each column o’er,
While they in rapture kneeling do adore,
And rising, vow allegiance to their queen.
The trumpet’s peal, a thousand helmets shine,
The long ranks into perfect order pass,
And at the command move on. Alas!
That fortune’s star for such should e’er decline,
That pomp of pride, that dreams of regal sway
Should like the mists of morning melt away.

* * * * *

The man of the least mental powers may be perfect if he move within the limits of his own capacities and abilities, but even the noblest advantages become obscured, annulled, and annihilated, when symmetry, that is so indispensable, is broken through. This mischief will still oftener appear in these present times; for who will be able to satisfy the requirements of a present ever calling for more exertion and in the highest state of excitement?—_Goethe._

CHARACTER BUILDING.

By JAMES KERR.

Failure in any enterprise often rouses to fresh effort. You fall in order to rise again. You are thrown down that you may rise higher. Failure may thus carry in its bosom a rich harvest of good. In men of spirit, who are not easily cowed, it acts as a spur to exertion. Every time such a man is thrown down, and, like the fabled Titan, touches mother earth, he rises again with renewed strength. Many a great orator has failed ignominiously in his first attempt; but if he has the right stuff in him he is not disheartened. Like the late Lord Beaconsfield, he says indignantly: “The time will come when you will hear me!” He says it, and he keeps his word. We have a similar instance in M. Thiers, the French historian and statesman. When as a young man he made his _debut_ in the Chamber of Deputies, his speech was not a success. He felt that he had failed. On returning home he said to his friends, “I have been beaten; but never mind, I am not cast down, I am making my first essay in arms. Beaten to-day, beaten to-morrow; it is the fate of the soldier and the orator. In the tribune, as under fire, defeat is as useful as a victory. We begin again!” Such was the spirit of the man, such his indomitable resolution; and we all know that his efforts were at last crowned with complete success.

Failure, disappointment, and difficulties to be surmounted, doubtless contribute an element of strength to the character. We thus learn to persevere in a difficult task. Speaking of the failures, delays, and obstacles met with at the siege of Troy, Shakspere puts these words into the mouth of Agamemnon—

“Which are, indeed, naught else
But the protractive trials of the great Jove,
To find persistive constancy in man.”

Trials, misfortunes and difficulties of every kind, if properly met, are a means of discipline. In the struggle with them we are made stronger. They brace the mind, and give it firmness. A disposition naturally gentle requires this tonic to prepare it for the rougher duties of life. Many can say that the disappointments and trials they have met with have given a firmness to their temper which was much needed, and have been of the greatest service to them.

I have never known any one who had difficulties to contend with in his youth, and who wrestled with them successfully, who was not thankful for them later in life. They felt that these difficulties, resisted and overcome, helped to mould their character and make them stronger and better men than they would otherwise have been.

We read in the letters of Thomas Erskine, of Linlathen, as follows: “A friend of mine once repeated to me a sentence which he thought utter nonsense, but to me it seemed to have a meaning. _What were rocks made for, my brethren? Even that mariners might avoid them._ There was a gain in having avoided rocks, which there would not be if rocks had never existed.”

In the same manner we may say, What was evil made for? Even that we may avoid it. There is a gain in having avoided and resisted evil, which there would not be if evil had never existed.

The trials and troubles of life afford an education to which no other is equal. We have not the finest type of character in the monk and the nun, who lead a life of seclusion far away from the evil of the world. Their virtues are only negative. It is not among those who are shut up within stone walls and jealously guarded, that you obtain the noblest type of character. On the contrary, it is among those who have had to struggle with evil in all its forms in the strife and conflict of life. In this way virtue is strengthened, and a character formed nobler than a life of mere innocence could impart.

It is seen that in those places where there is the greatest amount of vice, there are also to be found many examples of the greatest virtue. It is said that nowhere are there such good people as in London, and the reason assigned is that nowhere are there so many bad people. The Londoner lives in the midst of temptations which have to be avoided and resisted—thus the habit of virtue and of self-control is formed. Those who are good, in spite of manifold temptations to evil, are likely to be very good. Their virtue will be of a more robust type than that of those who are immured in nunneries, and who are kept innocent by temptation being removed out of their way.

There are two ways of dealing with mankind. You may remove them from every temptation, and thus keep them innocent in outward act. Or you may place them in the midst of temptations, trusting to their power of resisting them. You wish, for example, to guard a man from the habit of drunkenness. You shut him up within stone walls, where the very smell of drink is unknown; or you place him in a lonely island, where there is no beverage to be had stronger than pure water.

In this way you get rid of the temptation, but you sacrifice the man. You make of him a nonentity. Others, not less wise, would pursue a different course. They would leave him a free agent in the world, with all its trials and temptations. The probability is he would defend himself from the danger; for, after all, even in the most drink-loving nations, it is only a small proportion of the population that give way to this vice. This latter method has the advantage, instead of sacrificing the man, of improving him. It contributes an element of strength to his character, and trains him to be a brave soldier in the battle of life.

There is much in this avoidance of evil and keeping it in check. It is the great means available for the development of our moral nature. What exercise is to the body, resistance to evil is to the mind.

THE RECREATIONS OF THE PARIS WORKMAN.

By R. HEATH.

The recreations of the better class of Paris workmen wear a character of Arcadian simplicity.

On fêtes, and especially during that of the Republic, which, though nominally confined to the fourteenth of July, continues for several Sundays afterward, there is much dancing and all the ordinary amusements of a fair.

The first day of the week, is, however, only a holiday once a month, for the majority of workmen. On the afternoon of pay-Sunday the workman takes his family outside the barrier for a walk into the country. They have a simple dinner at one of the numerous restaurants in the neighborhood, and wander in the woods, plucking the wild flowers, or find a quiet nook, where one of the party reads aloud. These happy afternoons fill the workman’s heart with joy, and he begins to recall his childhood and to talk of his old home in some distant province. He takes his wine, is joyously excited, but nothing more; the whole family return by train or tram-car, laden with lilac or wild flowers, and are safe in bed by eleven o’clock.

Saturday evening is the favorite time for the theater. The workman prefers the drama, and if the scene is pathetic, is easily moved to tears.

On Sunday afternoon a few visit the Louvre, the Luxembourg, and the Salon, and other picture galleries when open. They are observed to fix their attention mostly on historical scenes, or pictures which touch the feelings; a scene from the Inquisition, a mother weeping over her children, or an inundation, or a famine.

Compared with the German, the Paris workman can hardly be said to possess any musical faculty whatever. The loud and harsh noises to be heard night and day in Paris indicate that the popular ear must be in an almost infantine condition. Cracking their whips with the utmost violence is the ceaseless delight of Parisian drivers, and during the fête and for many days after, the urchins on the street render life unsupportable by constant detonations of gunpowder.

To judge from the way the workmen gather round bookstalls, and the avidity with which the young among them may be seen devouring a book while waiting for the tram, reading must be a real enjoyment to the more intelligent. I have seen a young fellow in a blouse reading a book as he sat astride on the back of a heavy cart-horse. A friend, a lady who has made friends with a family at Belleville, finds them not only to possess a good library, but to be well acquainted with French literature. When a workman is a reader his taste will be good. He will despise novels, especially of the vicious order; his favorite books are histories of the Revolution, such as Lamartine’s “Girondins;” Louis Blanc’s “Dix Ans;” “Histoire de Deux-Décembre,” etc.; and for classics, Voltaire, Rousseau, and perhaps Corneille.

If in the present adult population many may be found with literary and artistic tastes, the workmen of the next generation will be educated men, in the vulgar sense of the word; for it would be difficult to give adequate expression to the fury with which the instruction of the people is pressed forward. All classes combine; the Republicans because they sincerely believe that popular instruction is the great panacea for all the ills of the world; Conservatives, because they hope that it will make the people reasonable; Catholics, because they fear to lose even those who still hold to the church.

Primary instruction is now compulsory and gratuitous. The choice of the school rests with the father or guardian, but he can not neglect to have his child instructed by some one and somewhere. The communal schools are excellent, and the greatest pains taken with the instruction. For the present generation there are multitudes of lecture courses, popular and gratuitous. I have no means of exactly knowing the number, but it is said that there are now in Paris during the season as many as 2,000 courses of lectures of one kind or another. A very great number of these are open to the public.

In a speech made last December at the West London School of Art, Mr. Mundella, M.P., stated that he had recently been in France for the purpose of inquiring into the new system of education, which came into operation on the 1st of October last year, and that while there he had spent some time in trying to ascertain the progress the French were making in giving instruction in art. The Vice-President of the Council declared himself “perfectly astounded by the facts that had come to his knowledge on the subject. He had seen in Paris placards, six feet long, offering gratuitous instruction to every person employed in certain trades who would come and accept it. He found schools of art, which were attended by hundreds and thousands of students, in every part of the country. These schools were supported, not only by government aid, but by the different municipalities out of the local rates and taxes. Thus all the artisans of Paris, and a large number of those in the country, were receiving gratuitous art instruction. The Paris municipality expended £32,000 in this way last year, and that sum will be largely exceeded during the present year. He had brought with him the ‘Paris Budget for Education’ for next year (1883), and he found from it that that city with its population of 1,900,000 would spend on education double the amount that was expended for the education of the four millions who lived in London.”

Why then may we not hope to see many Garfields in the French Republic? The first great difficulty is the strong feeling of caste which exists as powerfully in the workman as in any other class.

M. Poulot has related an amusing instance of the way a young lady of the middle class and her mother turned away from him with a kind of horror when they learnt that he actually _worked_ in a factory, and helped to make the steam engines. But I have met with an instance quite as startling on the other side. Meeting at the house of a mutual friend, an orator, who, a few days before, I had heard deliver a strong philippic against the government, at a meeting mainly composed of workmen, and on a question of interest to them, I asked him to introduce me to one of his friends. He assured me that he only knew them in the meetings, but that he did not know the address of any. Nothing could give a stronger impression of the immense chasm between the working class and those not actually members of it, than to find one of their prominent advocates—a man who, I believe, has been devoted for years to their cause—without a single private friend among working-men.—_Good Words._

A RUSSIAN NOVELIST.

By GABRIEL MONOD.

France has just lost an author who, though he never wrote in French, had made France his adopted country, and had been adopted by her as one of her most illustrious novelists—Ivan Tourgénief. From the time when the petty persecution of the Russian government obliged him to leave his native land, he settled in France with his friends the Viardots, paying only short occasional visits to Russia. It was at Bougival, near Paris, that he died on the third of September, of a painful disease from which he had been suffering for more than two years. His works were often translated into French from the manuscript itself, and appeared simultaneously in French and in Russian; and though he depicted Russian types and manners exclusively, his reputation was as great in Paris as at St. Petersburg, and he passed with the general public for a great French writer. He has contributed, more than any one else, to make Russia understood in France, and to create a sympathy between the two nations. Contemporary Russia lives complete in his works. In his “Memoirs of a Russian Nobleman,” or “Recollections of a Sportsman,” he has given expression to the sufferings, the melancholy, the poetry, of the Russian country-folk, and prepared the way for the emancipation of the peasants; in “A Nest of Nobles” he has depicted the monotonous life of the lesser gentry, living on their small fortunes in the heart of Russia; in “Dimitri Roudine,” in “Smoke,” and in “The Vernal Waters,” we find those Russian types which are met with all over Europe—those nomads whose incoherent brains are seething with all sorts of ideas, social, political, and philosophical; those spirits in search of an ideal and a career, whom the narrow and suffocating social life of Russia has turned into idlers and weaklings; those worldlings, with their eccentric or vulgar frivolity; those women, amongst whom we may find all that is most cruel in coquetry and most sublime in self-devotion. Last of all, in “Fathers and Sons,” he has revealed, with a prophetic touch, the first symptoms of that moral malady of Nihilism which is eating at the heart of modern Russia, and in “Virgin Soil” he has given us a faithful and impartial description of the society created by the Nihilistic spirit. Tourgénief is a realist; his personages are real, his pictures are drawn from life, his works are full of true facts; but he is at the same time a true artist, not only in virtue of the power with which he reproduces what he has seen, but because he has the faculty of raising his personages to the dignity of human types of lasting truth and universal significance, and because he describes, not all he sees, but only what strikes the imagination and moves the heart. He is wholesomely objective; he does not describe his heroes, he makes them act and speak; the reader sees and hears and knows them as if they were living people—loves them and is sorry for them—hates and despises them. Tourgénief is one of those novelists who have created the greatest number of living types; he is one of those in whom we find the largest, the most sensitive, the most human heart. He has shown, like Dickens, all that warmth of heart can add to genius.—_The Contemporary Review._

A LAY OF A CRACKED FIDDLE.

By FREDERICK LANGBRIDGE.

When I was quite a tiny mite,
And life a joyful ditty,
I used to know a poor old wight
Who fiddled through the city.
Alas! it’s thirty years ago—
Time _is_ so quaint and flighty!
And now I’ve mites myself, you know,
And not so very mighty.
And he’s unvexed by flat and sharp;
He’s guessed the awful riddle,
And, haply, got a golden harp
In place of that old fiddle.

And yet, methinks, I see him now—
So clear the memory lingers—
His long grey hair, his puckered brow,
His trembling, grimy fingers,
The comforter that dangled down
Beyond his waist a long way,
The beaver hat with battered crown,
He’d pause to brush—the wrong way,
The brown surtout that still could brag
Its buttons down the middle,
And, crowning all, the greenish bag
That held the sacred fiddle.

Two tunes he played, and only two,
One over, one beginning;
“God Save the Queen’s” collapse we knew
Was “Kitty Clover’s” inning.
How startlingly the bow behaved—
Curveted, jerked, and bounded—
The while our gracious queen was saved,
And knavish tricks confounded!
And oh! the helpless, hopeless woe,
Brimful and running over,
In (_very_ slow) the o—o—oh
Of bothering Kitty Clover!

And so he’d jerk and file and squeak
Like twenty thousand hinges,
While every sympathetic cheek
Was racked with shoots and twinges.
The lawyer left his lease or will,
The workman stopped his hammer,
The druggist ceased to roll the pill,
And ran to calm the clamor.
From doors and windows jingled down
A dancing shower of copper,
Accompanied by many a frown,
And sometimes speech improper.

He gathered up the grudging dole,
And sought a different station,
But always with a bitter soul,
And deep humiliation.
For what though music win you pence,
If praise it fail to win you?
If fees are paid to hurry hence,
And never to continue?
“Bad times for art,” he’d sometimes say
To any youthful scholar;
“They’d rather grub for brass to-day,
Than listen to Apoller.”

And so with quaint, pathetic face,
Aggrieved and disappointed,
The minstrel moved from place to place,
And mourned the times disjointed.
His hat was browner than of yore,
His grizzled head was greyer,
And none had ever cried “Encore,”
Or praised the poor old player.
I came to feel (and was not wrong)—
His day was nearly over—
He’d not be bothered very long
By cruel Kitty Clover.

One day, within a shady square,
Where people lounged or sat round,
He’d played his second woeful air,
And now he took the hat round.
He met with many a gibe and grin,
With coarser disaffection,
The while he tottered out and in,
Receiving the collection.
At length he stopped, with downcast eye,
Beneath a lime tree’s cover,
Where sat a maiden, sweet and shy,
Beside her handsome lover.

Half hidden in her leafy place,
The modest little sitter
Just glanced into the fiddler’s face,
And read his story bitter.
Unskilled in life and worldly ways,
By womanhood’s divining,
She knew the minstrel’s soul for praise
And sympathy was pining.
Herself with all a heart could need,
No dearest dream denied her,
She felt her gentle spirit bleed
For that poor wretch beside her.

She hung her head a little while,
Then, growing somewhat bolder,
She rose, and with a blush and smile,
Just touched the minstrel’s shoulder.
“How charmingly you play,” she said.
“How nice to be so clever!
My friend and I” (her cheeks grew red)
“Could sit entranced for ever.
I’ve taken lessons—all in vain;
My touch is simply hateful.
Oh! if you’d play those tunes again,
I’d be so very grateful.”

He rosined up his rusty bow
(His eyes were brimming over),
Then (o—o—oh!) meandered slow
Through endless “Kitty Clover.”
He’d suffered many a cruel wrong
Amid a sordid nation;
He’d waited wearily and long—
At last the compensation!
What cared he now for snub and sneer
From churlish fools around him?
In those sweet eyes he saw a tear,
And felt that fame had crowned him.

And you, my friends, may laugh or frown,
And still I’ll risk the saying,
That angels stooped from glory down
To hear the fiddler playing.
And he that holds the golden pen,
That chief of all the bright ones,
Who registers the deeds of men,
The wrong ones and the right ones—
He oped the book, and did record
A sweet and gracious deed there—
A deed performed to Christ the Lord
That he shall smile to read there.

BLUE LAWS.

An interesting and suggestive chapter in our early colonial history is found in the constitution, laws and court records of Connecticut. That some of the enactments and judicial proceedings, to those ignorant of the peculiar condition of the colonists, seem ludicrous, and fit to provoke the unfriendly criticism they have received, is not denied. But an honest, competent critic can not take them thus, and will not hastily discredit the intelligence of the men who, under new and most trying circumstances, made such regulations for their little commonwealth as the exigencies of the situation seemed to demand. We do not approve of all the laws of that olden-time as wise and just; nor do we think the administration always beyond just reproach; but we do venerate the men who for the glory of God and the good of society enacted and rigorously enforced them.

The ancient orthography is retained as a specimen of the English of that day:

CONSTITUTION OF 1638.

“For as much as it hath pleased the Almighty God, by the wise
disposition of his divine providence, so to order and dispose
of things, that we, the inhabitants, and residents of Windsor,
Hartford and Weathersfield, are now dwelling in and uppon the
river of Conneticut, and the lands thereunto adjoining; and
well knowing, when a people are gathered together, the word
of God requires, that, to the maintienence of the peace and
union of such a people there should bee an orderly and decent
government established, according to God, to order and dispose
of the affaires of the people at all seasons, as occasions shall
require; doe therefore associate and conjoine ourselves to bee
as one publique State or Commonwealth; and doe for ourselves and
our successors, and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time
hereafter, enter into combination, and confederation together, to
meinteine and preserve libberty, and the purity of the gospell of
our Lord Jesus, which we now profess; as also the discipline of
the churches which, according to the truth of said gospell is now
practiced amongst us, as allso in all our civil affaires to be
guided, and governed according to such lawes, rules, orders and
decrees, as shall bee made, ordered, and decreed, as followeth.”

Then follows the constitution in eleven well considered sections, making provision for the three departments—legislative, judicial and executive. We freely confess our admiration of this wonderful document, but can not, for want of room, print it. This is the less necessary as it evidently formed the basis of the charter of 1662, and its leading provisions have been copied, with some modifications, into the constitutions of the several States, and of the United States. As the first written constitution formed for and adopted by a free people, for their own government, it is a marvel of excellence. Written without a model, it asserts for its authors a more comprehensive and thorough statesmanship than is usually attributed to the leaders in colonial politics at that early day.

The most peculiar feature of their civil polity was that only the righteous were to be in authority, and all power was vested in members of the church; and the conservative influence of religion variously confessed. The church and state were separate, yet, not inconsistently, we find an article headed:

“MAINTENANCE OF MINISTRY.”