Chapter I: Part 1

THE SCRAP BOOK.

Vol. I. MAY, 1906. No. 3.

MARK TWAIN'S IDEAL GENTLEMAN.

On the arms of the Prince of Wales are the words _Ich dien_--"I serve." Thus he who stands next to the English king expresses in terms of service that gentle and knightly rank which is typified by his high position.

Speaking to a New York audience a few weeks ago, Mark Twain made passing reference to the communications which he receives from strangers who ask for his counsel or advice. "Here is such a request," he said. "It is a telegram from Joplin, Missouri, and it reads: 'In what one of your books can we find the definition of a gentleman?' I have not answered that telegram," he continued. "I couldn't. It seems to me that if any man has just, merciful, and kindly instincts, he will be a gentleman, for he will need nothing else in this world."

Taking from his pocket a letter from William Dean Howells, the speaker went on:

"I received the other day a letter from my old friend,
William Dean Howells--Howells, the head of American
literature. No one is able to stand with him. He is an old,
old friend of mine, and he writes me: 'To-morrow I shall be
sixty-nine years old.' Why, I am surprised at Howells
writing that. I have known him longer than that. I'm sorry
to see a man trying to appear so young. Let's see, Howells
says now, 'I see you have been burying Patrick. I suppose he
was old, too.'"

There was silence. For a short time the great humorist and humanitarian stood there apparently oblivious to his audience, reminiscence working in his heart. Then, with spontaneous eloquence, he delivered the following noble tribute, which must rank among the loftier expressions of democracy--Mark Twain's conception of an ideal gentleman:

"No, he was never old--Patrick. He came to us thirty-six years ago. He was my coachman on the morning that I drove my young bride to our new home. He was a young Irishman, slender, tall, lithe, honest, truthful, and he never changed in all his life. As the children grew up he was their guide. He was all honor, honesty, and affection. He was with us last summer, and his hair was just as black, his eyes were just as blue, his form just as straight, and his heart just as good as on the day we first met. In all the long years Patrick never made a mistake. He never needed an order; he never received a command. He knew. I have been asked for my idea of an ideal gentleman, and I give it to you--Patrick McAleer."

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While

Stuyvesant Fish Says That Americans Are Wasteful, While
Pastor Wagner Praises Our National Character--John D.
Rockefeller, Jr., and Professor Fagnani Discuss Joseph's
Corner in Corn--Thomas F. Ryan Holds That Opportunity to Win
Wealth is Necessary to Industrial Progress--Andrew Carnegie
as the Financier of Spelling Reform--With Other Opinions of
Representative Men on Questions of the Time.

_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

A PLEA FOR THE HIGHER ECONOMY.

Unnecessary Waste is the Crying Evil in
All Our Business Administration,
Says Stuyvesant Fish.

"The Higher Economy" is the theme upon which Stuyvesant Fish, the well-known president of the Illinois Central Railroad, discourses in the _Arena_ for March. Mr. Fish is a solid figure in finance. His idea of economy is not parsimony, but thrift--the prevention of waste. The higher economy, he points out, is needed in the household, in the state, and in the management of corporations. First, he speaks of waste in the household:

No one will question that our people are spendthrifts,
earning money freely and wasting it to such an extent as to
make it proverbial that what is thrown out of our kitchens
would support a frugal people in almost any country in
Europe.

Conditions in local, State, and Federal government are much in need of reform, continues Mr. Fish:

There is not only waste and extravagance in administration,
and what is now commonly called graft, which is a
combination of bribery and larceny, but, what is
economically worse, the laws are so framed as not to get
the best use out of the taxes paid by the people. What we
have to fear is not so much the magnitude of the
appropriation as that our laws require that an uneconomical
and therefore bad use be made of them.

In the Post-Office Department, for example, there was, in 1905, a deficit of fourteen million dollars, which the writer thinks was due to laws and not to administration. Government free matter cost twenty million dollars. Rural free delivery cost nearly twenty-one millions, the receipts covering only about one-quarter of this sum. Mr. Fish does not think it surprising that under laws which not only permit, but require, such a waste of public revenues there is a deficit, and that the deficit should be growing rapidly.

The Surgeon's Knife Needed.

Under the head of corporate management, Mr. Fish says:

I need not repeat that the country is prosperous, and likely
to continue so. While fully appreciating these facts, we
cannot shut our eyes to the trouble that has been going on
in the center of our financial system.

Having looked into the matter myself somewhat carefully of late, I beg to say to you in all seriousness that not only in the insurance companies, but in many other corporations, there is need of the advice and probably the knife of the trained surgeon. Without pretending to any superior knowledge on the subject, I think that the root of the evil lies in too few men having undertaken to manage too many corporations; that in so doing they have perverted the powers granted under corporate charters, and in their hurry to do a vast business have in many cases done it all.

We who--as breadwinners, as taxpayers, and as stockholders--provide the wherewithal suffer because we have set others to rule over us without holding them to that strict accountability for the discharge of their trust which the common law and common sense alike demand. Indeed, things have come to such a pass that in certain quarters it is now considered indecorous and ill-bred for us, the many, even to discuss, much less to correct, the shortcomings of the elect few. Such was neither the theory nor the practise on which our forefathers ordered the economy of this republic.

KINDLY WORDS FROM PASTOR WAGNER.

The Author of "The Simple Life" Sets
Forth in Friendly Terms His
Impressions of America.

Charles Wagner, the author of "The Simple Life," has published a volume, "Vers le Coeur de l'Amerique" ("Toward the Heart of America"), in which are recorded his impressions of the United States as gathered during his visit here in the fall of 1904. He is no globe-trotting critic, nor is he a collector of statistics; he gives merely an account of what he has seen.

Of President Roosevelt the famous French pastor holds a high opinion, as this bit of appreciation indicates:

A man in sympathy with the humble; equal to all emergencies;
as great as the greatest; truly a man, one of those who do
most honor to the human family.

One feels that he is ready for any struggle; willing to step
behind the gun himself, if need be. Thus in regard to
subjects relating to public spirit, nothing which might
contribute to promoting a mutual understanding among
American citizens leaves him indifferent. He often says that
that which is important for the welfare and the power of the
people is not so much the existence of a few isolated
characters of extraordinary powers as a good general level
of public spirit.

Effort, individual energy, the sentiment of responsibility,
a primordial decision to go straight ahead and not be
diverted--all this, combined with a sociable disposition and
a willingness not to go to the end of one's right out of
regard for one's neighbor, is what he most appreciates.

As a pastor, M. Wagner was struck by the depth of religious feeling in the United States. The great diversity of creeds signified to him vitality and liberty, not the loss of a central belief. He was surprised, too, to find such cordial relations existing among different sects.

In our schools, he says, it is possible to trace the universality of the ideals of democratic government. The public schools are the mills to which comes the grist of immigration, to be ground into American citizens.

To the American character he admits the advantages of youth--sincerity, frankness, prompt initiative; and with these, the maturer qualities of endurance and patient wisdom.

The strength of the country, concludes this most kindly of observers, is in four strongholds. The first is religious faith. The Americans, he says, are a religious nation by heredity as well as by conviction. The second stronghold is the belief in liberty:

Our old Europe shows us states whose entire politics consist in hindering the development of men and institutions. There law takes the form of a systematic prohibition, initiative is regarded as lack of discipline, independence of mind as an act or a beginning of treason. America believes in liberty as she believes in God; and, as she believes in the God of others, she also believes in the liberty of others. To individuality there is left an unlimited field. From childhood, strength of character is encouraged. Each one is expected to show himself in the fulness of his originality; all he is asked in return is to respect the right of his neighbor.

Though Pastor Wagner recognizes our country's originality in questionable financial schemes, he thinks that on the whole our relations are marked by sincerity and conscientiousness. Therefore, he names honesty as our third stronghold.

The fourth is respect for women. Custom makes slaves of women in France, while in America our national respect for them gives them freedom and the opportunity to develop.

JOSEPH'S CORNER IS NOW DEFENDED.

Pros and Cons of an Old Question Discussed
by J.D. Rockefeller, Jr.,
and Professor C.P. Fagnani.

Joseph's policy in cornering the visible supply of corn in Egypt has found its defense. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., raised the question a short time ago in his New York Bible class, and after discussing the transaction in its different phases, said that he could not see how Joseph had done anything unjust. The foresight and ability of Joseph, said Mr. Rockefeller, saved the people of Egypt from starvation.

Mr. Rockefeller's talk, in substance at least, appears to have been as follows:

One commentator says that Joseph bought the fifth part of
the corn crop of the years of plenty. If that was true, we
can find nothing to criticize in him, because he gave them a
market for their product. If, as another commentator says,
he levied this fifth as taxes, we can have no criticism, for
he created a reserve supply against the time of want.

In the distribution of the corn during the famine, did
Joseph act rightly? Should he have given away the corn
instead of selling it? They brought money to purchase it,
and when they had no money they offered their cattle, and
finally their land and themselves, for they did not want to
die....

Joseph let them have corn at their own terms. They did not
then become slaves as we think of slaves. The situation then
was that they were tenants of the land. The only difference
was that the people not only paid the tax as they had paid
it before the famine, but paid a rental of exactly the same
amount, the lands being held by Pharaoh. They had sold their
land to Pharaoh for the food.

A few days after this pronouncement Professor Charles P. Fagnani, of the Union Theological Seminary, was addressing the New York Baptist Social Union on "Christianity and Democracy," and among other things he said:

The corn corner of Joseph has been in the public eye
recently. That young man had a good private character, but
Joseph, the king's jackal, who took every advantage to take
away all the property of others, can be held up only to
obloquy. Compare Joseph, the enslaver of the people, with
Moses, the liberator!

What was the matter with Joseph? He was, like most men, only
fractionally converted. We think the conversion of a man in
his private character is enough; but he was not converted as
a citizen and as a man.

In conclusion we may note the Richmond _Times-Dispatch's_ remark that "compared with Mr. Rockefeller's, Joseph's was a mere cozy corner."

SOCIALISM'S LATEST MILLIONAIRE CONVERT.

Views Expressed by J.M. Patterson, of
Chicago, Who Has Resigned Office
Because of His Convictions.

One of the most recent converts to Socialism is Joseph Medill Patterson, of Chicago. Though he is now only twenty-seven years of age, Mr. Patterson has had a strong taste of public life as commissioner of public works in Chicago. In the local campaign of 1905 he supported Judge (now Mayor) Dunne, who, after election, gave him his important appointment. He has now resigned the commissionership. In his letter of resignation he says:

It was through a common belief in the cause of municipal
ownership of municipal utilities that I first became
acquainted with you, and in this letter of resignation I
desire to express publicly just how my views on this subject
have changed. They have not diminished. They have enlarged.

I used to believe that many of the ills under which the
nation suffers, and by which it is threatened, would be
prevented or avoided by the general inauguration of public
ownership of public utilities. But my experience in the
Department of Public Works has convinced me that this policy
would not be even one-fourth of the way sufficient.

He then goes on to say that in Great Britain--where municipal trading has been highly developed--the problem of the unemployed is becoming very intense; while in Germany--where municipal and government ownership of public utilities has become almost the rule--the gap between the possessions of the rich and the poor grows wider every day. The letter concludes:

The universal ballot gives every male citizen an equal
political opportunity. The common ownership of all the means
of production and distribution would give everybody an equal
chance at music, art, sport, study, recreation, travel,
self-respect, and the respect of others. I, for one, cannot
see why those things should be concentrated more and more in
the hands of a few.

Two hundred years ago a proposition for equal political
opportunity would have seemed more absurd than to-day seems
the proposition for equal opportunity in all things on this
earth for which men strive.

I have hardly read a book on socialism, but that which I
have just enunciated I believe in general to be its theory.
If it be its theory, I am a socialist. You will find, and
other advanced liberals and radicals who believe as I do
will also find, that you are merely paltering with skin-deep
measures when you stop short of socialism.

Interviewed regarding his conversion to socialism, Mr. Patterson adds:

When we say that things should be divided equally we mean
that every man should have a chance. Men like Schwab and
Carnegie have risen from poor young men to wealth; but they
are the extraordinary young men. The ordinary young man is
not able to rise above his birth, and the extraordinary
young man is one in a million.

I don't mean that all the money in the country should be cut
up into equal parts. What I mean is that the people should
own in common all the means of production, the sources of
wealth, and divide the results. The talk of economical
equality is no more ridiculous now than was the talk of
social equality years ago.

Suppose Alfred G. Vanderbilt has five million dollars
invested in his railroads. Say there are twenty-five
thousand employees. Out of his investment he receives, say,
five per cent, which is two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year. He doesn't turn a wheel, he doesn't move a
locomotive, he doesn't do a thing for the railroad. He
simply owns it. He doesn't contribute toward making the road
safe. Those men earn so much money for him. Suppose he
should give them what they earn, instead of taking it
himself?

My idea is to have things equally divided so that when a man
dies his children shall not inherit wealth.

Mr. Patterson is a son of a wealthy family. His father, Robert W. Patterson, proprietor of the Chicago _Tribune_, is a conservative, opposed to his son's beliefs. But he adds: "I am a firm believer in letting everybody think as he pleases, including my son." He says, however, that if the young man runs for office on the socialistic ticket, the _Tribune_ certainly will not support him.

THE RICH MAN IS NOW THE UNDER DOG.

If the Millionaire Does Not Give, He is
"Stingy;" if He Does Give, He
is Called a "Briber."

Dr. Emil G. Hirsch, the distinguished Chicago rabbi, says that "charity, as the word is known to-day, is only a bribe of moneyed men to make a community forget the wrongs heaped upon it." The New York _Globe_ catches at the text, and brings out the fact that present-day critics are leaving the rich no refuge at all. The rich man is the common target.

Heretofore the poor man has had the world's sympathy as the
under dog. Now he is becoming supercanine and the rich man
subcanine. Does the rich man not give? He is stingy. Does he
give? He is a briber--passes from negative to positive
crime.

If he would get rid of superfluous wealth his only chance is
to buy edifices and burn them down uninsured. Even then he
might be arrested for arson and accused of maliciously
overworking the poor firemen; or hygienists would say he was
dirtying the air with smoke, and thus murdering those
compelled to breathe it.

Instead of settlements for the neglected poor--such
institutions as grew up in East London after Sir Walter
Besant wrote "All Sorts and Conditions of Men"--there should
be settlements for the neglected rich.

As things are now they have no chance--their best is
necessarily a worst. Victims of society, equally condemned
whether they do or don't do, no option seems open but to
journey to the extreme edge of space and jump off into
nothingness.

A favorite doctrine of Calvinistic New England was that a
man was not saved unless entirely and absolutely willing to
be damned for the glory of God; with a similar inexorable
logic our new moralists have established the doctrine of
unescapable taint--that if a man have and keep he is stewed
in iniquity; that if he does not keep, adding would-be
bribery to his other sins, he scatters his own corruption
among the innocent.

Ground between upper and nether stones, fenced in all
directions, the life of the rich is necessarily an ethical
tragedy. Whatever he does or doesn't do, the rich man is a
traitor to the kingdom, a puller down of the temple.

It is obvious that the only thing feasible is to abolish
wealth and go back to the tree-climbing days, to that period
of primitive apehood when each plucked his own cocoanut and
had no thought of ownership, tainted or untainted.

GREAT SERVICES AND GREAT FORTUNES.

Thomas F. Ryan Contends that Opportunity
to Win Wealth is Necessary
to Stimulate Initiative.

Are the fortunes of to-day too vast? Does the getting of great wealth by individuals necessarily involve injustice to others? If it does, is it possible to prevent men from making much money without at the same time destroying the energy and initiative which spring up in the presence of opportunity?

These are familiar questions. Thomas F. Ryan has tried to answer them from the viewpoint of a successful financier, saying, in an article contributed to the _Independent_:

Fortunes which sometimes look excessive may be the result of
rendering great services to the community. If a man by
intense mental application or natural aptitude can introduce
important economies into railroad management, he is worthy
of a large salary. The salary would not in any case absorb
the entire saving made to the stockholders of the railroad
and to the public by the reforms introduced.

In some cases this claim of the inventor is compensated by
the royalties paid under the patent law; and there are many
services rendered in the matter of organization which are
not patentable, but afford as striking benefits as patents.
Among these, for instance, may be suggested the reduction in
the cost of the manufacture of steel by Mr. Carnegie and
those associated with him in the upbuilding of the
industries now combined in the Steel Corporation.

From such services have come many of our great fortunes. If
their possessors receive what amounts to a commission on the
services they rendered, it is only a small part of the
benefit they have conferred on the community.

Take away the opportunity for winning either money or
distinction by rendering such services, and few men, as
human nature is constituted, would render them.

It is right that competition between men should be brought
within constantly narrower and narrower rules of justice.
This is possible without taking away the initiative which
makes men do things, and seems to me the direction in which,
in spite of obstacles, humanity is tending.

Closely related to these arguments is the opinion of the New York _Evening Post_:

We do not believe that there is so formidable a jealousy and
hatred of wealth, in itself, as is frequently alleged to
exist, and to be growing. The sting lies in wealth unjustly
acquired. It is ill-gotten gain, flaunting itself, that is
the great breeder of socialism.

FOR THE REFORM OF ENGLISH SPELLING.

Many Representative Men Associated
With the New Movement to
Simplify Orthography.

Andrew Carnegie's latest activity is to champion a movement for the reform of English spelling. He has promised to finance a campaign by the Simplified Spelling Board. The greater part of the actual campaign work will be done by the following executive committee of the board: Professor Brander Matthews, chairman; Dr. Charles P.G. Scott, secretary; Dr. William Hayes Ward, Henry Holt, Dr. I.K. Funk, and Colonel H.B. Sprague. With Mr. Carnegie's backing, far-reaching results are likely to be gained.

Movements for reformed spelling are no new thing, but this is the first one that has been adequately financed.

Word comes from England that the poet Swinburne denounces the Carnegie plan as "a monstrous, barbarous absurdity." But the American press, on the whole, seems favorable. For example, the New York _Times_ says:

The number of people who are vehemently in love with the
difficulties, absurdities, inconsistencies--and crystallized
ignorances--of our present spelling is very small, and
neither their denunciation nor their ridicule will weigh at
all heavily upon the great majority, who look upon spelling
as a means to an end, and to an end quite different from the
preservation of etymological history in the most clumsy,
expensive, and deceptive of forms.

One might imagine, from the way in which the enemies of this
reform run on, that any changes made now would be the first
to which English spelling had ever been subjected--would be
the establishment of an evil precedent instead of merely a
slight hastening, in the interest of convenience and
economy, of a process that has been going on steadily ever
since the day when English became a written language.

One of our correspondents said yesterday that, in his
opinion, "before we try to monkey further with so good an
instrument as the English language we ought to try to use it
properly."

Well, not necessarily. With a little, or even with a lot, of
"monkeying" an amount of time almost incalculably large, now
devoted to the learning of such utterly useless and imbecile
things as the arrangement of the vowels in "siege" and
"seize," could be used on the task which our correspondent
wisely intimated is so important.

The personality of the Simplified Spelling Board is
guarantee that the demand for an improved orthography is not
an outgrowth of ignorance or irreverence. These men have
more than a little affection for the history of words, and
they are not at all likely to do anything that will hide or
distort it. They will, however, put and keep that history in
its proper place.

How Dr. Johnson Takes It.

It would seem, however, that the shades of former lexicographers are incensed by the threat of "fonetic speling." The New York _Globe_ describes the reception of the news in the land across the Styx:

It has been the practise at the Cheshire Cheese Inn in the
trans-Styx London, where post-mortem encyclopedists have
their "clubs," to make light of the modern verbal reformers
and "simplifiers." It was immediately seen, however, that
Andrew's addition to the reformer's fold put a very
different complexion on the case.

"Sir," said the doctor to Boswell, in his best "bow-wow"
manner, "I have never slept an hour less nor eat an ounce
less meat on account of these caitiffs, but now that the
Scotch barbarian, that futile Highland Cherokee, has
supplied them with money, they may ruin the language in a
twelvemonth."

"I don't see, sir," replied Boswell, "why my countryman did
not confine his charities to libraries and hero funds."

"Because, sir," thundered the doctor, "he is insane on the
subject of charity; he could not make a worse use of his
money than thus to threaten the integrity and purity of the
great vehicle of expression."

"There is, however, sir," replied Boswell, "something to be
said in their favor; thru saves three letters over through,
catalog saves two, becaws one; they take less ink, and less
room on a page; think of----"

"Well, sir," said the doctor, "suppose they do; what of
that? A man with his arms and legs off would take up less
room. You take up less room than I. Does that make you any
more valuable to the world?"

"I can see no logical objection, sir," replied Boswell, "to
the omission of silent letters. They do no good----"

"No good, sir!" snarled the doctor. "There are some letters,
sir, as there are some men, who do themselves more credit,
sir, when they are silent."

THE PUNISHMENT TO FIT THE OFFENDER.

Samuel J. Barrows Gives Reasons For
Favoring the Indeterminate Sentence
For Convicted Criminals.

Times and conditions have changed since Dickens and Charles Reade aroused the English-speaking world by revealing the inhuman abuses of the English prison system. To-day humane treatment is taken as a matter of course. The chief aim of the modern criminologist is not to punish the criminal but to cure him; and in curing him the first agency is fair treatment. Therefore is urged the necessity of making the penalty more nearly fit the crime.

According to Samuel J. Barrows, president of the International Prison Congress, "it is still more difficult to make the penalty fit the offender." In a recent article in the _Outlook_, he enters a plea for safeguarding the "indeterminate sentence" for convicted criminals. The best criminal code, he says, is an arbitrary instrument, and it is impossible, on any principle, so to construct one that the penalty and crime are commensurate. After making this assertion, he continues:

No legislator can show why the theft of twenty-five dollars
should be punishable with one year's imprisonment, and the
theft of twenty-six dollars with five years' imprisonment.
Nor is the difficulty removed by empowering the judge to use
his discretion in imposing sentence within certain limits of
minimum and maximum. A judge would find it hard to tell why
he sentenced one boy five years for stealing a dollar and
another boy one year for stealing two hundred dollars, or
another judge why he sent one boy to prison for a year, and
another, a first offender, to sixteen years for the same
offense. A study of codes on one hand and of sentences on
another reveals an amazing amount of contradiction and
confusion, not to say rank injustice, in the application of
penalties. For this inequality and injustice the
indeterminate sentence furnishes the necessary relief.
Instead of making the code-maker or the judge decide when a
man shall come out of prison, it puts the main
responsibility of deciding that question upon the prisoner
himself.

DOES COEDUCATION FEMINIZE COLLEGE?

Thorough Training, Rather than Separate
Training, is the Need of the
Times, Says President Jordan.

President David Starr Jordan, of Leland Stanford Junior University, has ever been a strong advocate of coeducation. At the present time, when the system is being so severely criticized in so many quarters, his defense of it, which appears in _Munsey's Magazine_ for March, sounds a note of reassurance. The article is an answer to an attack on coeducation--in the February issue of the same magazine--by President G. Stanley Hall, of Clark University.

To the charges that the character of college work has been lowered by coeducation, and that it offers difficulties or embarrassments in the class-room, Dr. Jordan replies with categorical denials. The argument that the presence of women tends to "feminize" the universities is, he grants, more serious. But he then enters into the following distinctions:

It has been feared that the admission of women to the
university would vitiate the masculinity of its standards;
that neatness of technique would impair boldness of
conception; and delicacy of taste replace soundness of
results. It is claimed that the preponderance of high school
educated women in ordinary society is showing some such
effects in matters of current opinion.

For example, it is claimed that the university extension
course is no longer of university nature. It is a lyceum
course designed to please women who enjoy a little poetry,
play, and music, who read the novels of the day, who dabble
in theosophy, Christian science, or psychology, who
cultivate their astral bodies and think there is something
in palmistry, and who are edified by a candy-coated ethics
of self-realization. There is nothing ruggedly true, nothing
masculine left in it.

Current literature and history are affected by the same
influences. Women pay clever actors to teach them, not
Shakespeare or Goethe, but how one ought to feel on reading
"King Lear" or "Faust." If the women of society do not read
a book, it will scarcely pay to publish it.

Science is popularized in the same fashion by ceasing to be
science and becoming mere sentiment or pleasing information.
This is shown by the number of books on how to study a bird,
a flower, a tree, or a star, through an opera-glass, and
without knowing anything about it. Such studies may be good
for the feelings or even for the moral nature, but they have
no elements of that "fanaticism for veracity" which is the
highest attribute of the educated man.

These results of the education of many women and of a few
men, by which the half-educated woman becomes a controlling
social factor, have been lately set in strong light by Dr.
Muensterberg; but they are used by him, not as an argument
against coeducation, but for the purpose of urging the
better education of more men. They form likewise an argument
for the better education of more women.

The remedy for feminine dilettanteism is found in more
severe training. Current literature reflects the taste of
the leisure class. The women with leisure who read and
discuss vapid books are not representative of woman's higher
education. Most of them have never been educated at all.

In any event, this gives no argument against coeducation. It
is thorough training, not separate training, which is
indicated as the need of the times. Where this training is
taken is a secondary matter, though I believe with the
fulness of certainty that better results, mental, moral, and
physical, can be obtained in coeducation than in any
monastic form of instruction.

The question whether or not coeducation leads to marriage seems to present few difficulties to Dr. Jordan. "Love and marriage and parenthood," he says, "will go on normally whatever our scheme of education."

PREDOMINANCE OF COLLEGE ATHLETICS.

Sport is the Great Secondary Interest in
Our Universities, Says Professor
Ostwald, a German Visitor.

Professor Wilhelm Ostwald, of the University of Leipsic, is not only a great chemist; he is also a philosopher, and his mind is alert to every kind of human interest. The courses of lectures which he delivered not long ago at Harvard and Columbia universities attracted much attention. Among other things he predicted that before long scientists might be creating living things.

Since his return to Germany, Professor Ostwald has been preparing for the Prussian government a report on what he observed in America. Meantime he talks freely to German press interviewers. He says of our college sports:

The personal interest of the students, next to their
studies, is concentrated on sport. Football before all is
loved uncommonly, and it is practised in such a fashion that
academic and State authorities are near to forbidding it
altogether. In the course of a single semester nineteen
students fell victims to brutal handling. At every American
university is a sort of open amphitheater, in which many
thousands of spectators view the periodic football battles.

The trouble is not, of course, that the great secondary interest of student life is sport, but that the American idea of college sport has come to be the training of a few champion athletes for the purpose of winning, not the training of all young men and women for the purpose of recreation. G. Upton Harvey dwells on this point in an article published in the _Review of Reviews_:

It really is not fair or profitable to judge athletics in
general, or any particular sport or game, by the benefits
secured by the few. The test should be the good accruing to
the nation at large. Athletics should build us up as a
people, raise the standard of average manhood, and thus
benefit us as a nation, rather than develop a selected few
who use their strength and skill chiefly as a means of
earning money.

In America, we love our players rather than our games. The
result is that only one man in a thousand acquires the
strength and proficiency which make him an acceptable
player. Our athletics develop the few, and benefit us but
little, if at all, as a people.

Of course, we turn out teams and individual athletes
unequaled anywhere else in the world. But what good does
that do you and me, who are shut out from participation in
the games because we are not giants in point of strength or
wizards in point of skill?

We are compelled to be mere onlookers at the present-day
baseball or football game, or track meet, to watch the
players with mingled feelings of awe and admiration, much as
the Romans of old sat about the amphitheater and marveled at
the exploits of the gladiators.

The "sport" of the Romans--desperate encounters between man
and man, or between man and wild beast--undoubtedly
developed men of unsurpassed courage, skill, and strength.
But did it benefit Rome?

Our athletes lead the world. That is a matter of record. But
how has this superiority been achieved? By making athletics
a business or a profession for selected individuals, instead
of a sport, a pastime, and a recreation for all. Athletics
as we know them may be sport or pastime for us as
spectators, but our games are no recreation for those who
participate in them.

The desire to excel, to win at any cost, is the root of the
evil. If we can't win, we drop out of the game and join the
ranks of spectators. The benefits of participating in an
afternoon's sport, even as a loser, are lost sight of. We do
not play for the sake of playing, or for the betterment of
our physical condition--we play to win, to come out first,
to excel our neighbors.

What we need to learn is to be cheerful losers. Any one can
be a gracious winner, but few of us are good losers. Until
we do learn that there is something in the game besides the
winning of it, we cannot hope that our athletics will be of
general benefit to the nation.

SHAW RAGES AGAINST THE AMATEUR STAGE.

The Author of "Candida" Declares
With Emphasis That Charity Actors
Make Themselves Ridiculous.

Bernard Shaw recently contributed to the London _Tribune_ a characteristic bit of criticism. It seems that he has been much annoyed by requests for permission to give amateur performances of his plays in behalf of charity. Mr. Shaw has a small opinion of amateur actors, as may be gathered from the following:

Almost all amateurs desire to imitate the theater rather
than to act a play.

Reach-me-down dresses, reach-me-down scenery, reach-me-down
equipments are considered good enough for dramatic
masterpieces--are positively preferred to decent and
beautiful things because they are so much more theatrical.

As to plays, they, too, must be second-hand reach-me-downs.
Your amateurs don't want to bring plays to a correct and
moving representation for the sake of the life they
represent; they want to do Hawtrey's part in this or Ellen
Terry's part in that, or Cyril Maude's part in the other.

The enormous and overwhelming advantage possessed by
amateurs--the advantage of being free from commercial
pressure and having unlimited time for rehearsal--is the
last one they think of using.

The commercial plays, which are the despair of actors, but
which they must produce or starve, are the favorites of our
amateurs. They do out of sheer folly and vulgarity what our
real dramatic artists do of necessity and give some saving
grace and charm to in the doing.

KAISER MAKES NEW TEN COMMANDMENTS.

The Most Versatile of Monarchs Draws
Up a List of Rules to be Followed
by Horse-Owners.

Varied and numerous as are his regular activities, the German Emperor frequently adds new ones to the list. One of the latest manifestations of his ubiquitous interest is the following productions, which he has sent to his friends under the title, "The Ten Commandments for Horse-Owners." It is worth preserving for two reasons--first, because of the soundness of the advice it offers; second, because it indicates that the most important figure among continental monarchs is not above considering the welfare of his dumb servants.

First--Do not expose your horses to draft, in or out of the
stable.

Second--Do not allow any broken windows in your stable. At
the same time see that it is properly ventilated.

Third--Do not keep your horses too warm. Never cover them
with blankets in the stable.

Fourth--Exercise your horses daily as the best preventive
against disease.

Fifth--Don't feed wet fodder, but give dry fodder and fresh
water. In winter let the water stand a while after taking it
from the well or faucet.

Sixth--Prevent ammonia gases, which are bad for the eyes and
the ligaments.

Seventh--Every fourth or sixth week remove the shoes and
have the hoofs attended to. After that the shoes may be
nailed on again.

Eighth--When the roads are covered with ice, use spiked
shoes.

Ninth--Do not put an ice cold bit into a horse's mouth in
winter unless you want him to have toothache and become ill.

Tenth--Be as careful of your horse's skin as of your own.

PARADOX PROVERBS.

These Pampered Children of Wisdom and Experience Find It So Difficult to
Agree That if They Had Teeth and Claws They Might Fight It Out in
the Manner of the Kilkenny Cats.

A proverb is defined in one of the more popular dictionaries of our language as "a brief, pithy saying, condensing in witty or striking form the wisdom of experience."

But experiences vary and often lead to different results, so that of proverbs it may be said that "what is one man's meat is another man's poison." It is as futile for a man to live his life in accordance with proverbs as it is for twenty cooks to collaborate in the making of a broth that will please the palates of all.

The truth is, proverbs are just as likely to disagree as are physicians. Here are a few that have agreed to disagree:

A proverb is one man's wit and all men's wisdom.

_A formal fool speaks naught but proverbs._

* * * * *

Education forms the man.

_By education most have been misled._

* * * * *

Everything comes to him who waits.

_He who would find must seek._

* * * * *

Better a patch than a hole.

_A true gentleman would rather have his clothes torn than
mended._

* * * * *

Patience surpasses learning.

_Patience is the virtue of asses._

* * * * *

No wickedness has any ground of reason.

_Success makes some crimes honorable._

* * * * *

He who hunts two hares at once will catch neither.

_It is always good to have two irons in the fire._

* * * * *

Never spur a willing horse.

_A good horse and a bad horse both need the spur._

* * * * *

The middle path is the safe path.

_The neutral is soused from above, and singed from below._

* * * * *

Many hands make light work.

_Too many cooks spoil the broth._

* * * * *

As ye sow, so shall ye reap.

_The seed you sow, another reaps._

* * * * *

Be sure you are right, then go ahead.

_Nothing venture, nothing have._

* * * * *

It is fortune, not wisdom, that rules man's life.

_Wisdom is the conqueror of fortune._

* * * * *

The wise man has a short tongue.

_Silence is the virtue of those who are not wise._

* * * * *

The face is the index of the mind.

_A fair skin often covers a crooked mind._

* * * * *

Trust not to appearances.

_A fair exterior is a silent recommendation._

* * * * *

Good fortune ever fights on the side of the prudent.

_Fortune helps the bold._

* * * * *

A rolling stone gathers no moss.

_Push on, keep moving._

* * * * *

Out of sight, out of mind.

_Absence makes the heart grow fonder._

* * * * *

A bad beginning makes a good ending.

_A good beginning makes a good ending._

* * * * *

Birds of a feather flock together.

_Two birds of prey do not keep each other company._

* * * * *

All truths are not to be told.

_Tell the truth and shame the devil._

* * * * *

No jealousy, no love.

_In jealousy there is more self-love than love._

* * * * *

The end justifies the means.

_Never do evil that good may come of it._

* * * * *

A sin confessed is half-forgiven.

_A sin concealed is half-pardoned._

WHEN THE LAST CURTAIN FELL.

Some Striking Instances of How Death Has Stepped Behind the Footlights
and Claimed His Victims in Full View of Audiences Who Have Mistaken Real
Tragedy for Play.

"Into Thy hands, O Lord! Into Thy hands!"

These words, inscribed on a card that was fastened to the cross of lilies sent by Queen Alexandra of England to be laid on the casket containing the body of Sir Henry Irving, were the last uttered on the stage by that famous actor. They are the last words of _Becket_, in Tennyson's drama of that name.

Though Irving did not die on the stage, the hand of death was upon him at the close of that last performance. He was scarcely more than outside the theater in Bradford, England, when he was stricken with syncope, and he died a few minutes after reaching his hotel.

There are a score of other cases on record in which death has appeared on the stage of a theater for the purpose of marking its victims.

It was a fateful irony that Signor Castelmary should be fatally stricken on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York, in the midst of the bright and romantic scenes of "Martha." A tragi-comedy if ever there were one!

Yet this overpowering mingling of the real and the unreal is by no means an unusual element of stage life. History records many instances of deaths on the stage; some of them the result of accidental violence, but by far the greater number caused by the sudden effect of overwrought emotions.

Sometimes death comes instantaneously; sometimes the blow is received from which recovery is impossible, and the actor lingers on with nothing but suffering and death before him. Both tragedy and comedy have been the scenes of actual death on the stage.

Peg Woffington, it will be remembered, was stricken with paralysis while playing _Rosalind_. She had gone through the entire play with a life and spirit which gave no sign of the weakening powers plainly evident to her companions on the stage, and had nearly concluded the epilogue:

"If I were among you, I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me----"

Her last words on the stage had been spoken. Staggering off the scene, she fell apparently lifeless, and recovered only to live three long years of loneliness and retirement away from the work she loved.

But most wonderful of all was Edmund Kean's last night on the stage. He was playing _Othello_ to his son's _Iago_ at Covent Garden, and, worn out with physical and mental excess, barely managed to conceal his incapacity and weakness from the audience.

Reaching the great scenes of the third act, they proved too much for his waning powers, and uttering the words, "Othello's occupation's gone," he began the next line, but was unable to complete it, and fell into his son's arms, with the faint cry:

"God, I am dying! Speak to them, Charles."

He was carried to his home, where he died seven weeks later.

The story of the death of John Palmer, while acting in "The Stranger" at Liverpool, in 1798, offers an instance almost analogous to the death of Castelmary. He had gone on with his part into the fourth act, when, faltering in his lines, he fell prostrate before his companion actor and died while being carried off the stage. The story that he died while uttering the lines in an earlier act, "There is another and a better world," is a fiction which requires denial almost as often as the story of his death is repeated.

Others have met with accidental death in melodramatic scenes at the hands of their overzealous brother actors. Sometimes the actor does himself actual violence, and there are a few instances on record of the murder of actor by actor during the performance of a play.

Crozier, for example, was accidentally stabbed by a brother actor in "Sins of the Night," at the Novelty, in London, on August 10, 1896. In 1820 Mme. Linsky was fatally shot in a melodrama by a soldier super; and in 1891, at a school representation of "Romeo and Juliet," in Manchester, England, the youngster playing _Tybalt_ killed _Romeo_ in the quarrel scene.

In 1898 Miss Ethel Marlowe died from heart disease at the Knickerbocker, New York, during a performance of "The Christian." Her sister, Virginia Marlowe, in 1896, and her father, Owen Marlowe, in 1876, also died on the stage in view of the audience.

Creating Wealth From Waste.

BY EUGENE WOOD.

The Number of Scrap-Heaps Is Diminishing as Manufacturers Learn that
By-Products Often Are More Valuable than the Things
from Which They Are Taken.

_An original article written for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

The true test of the industrial civilization of a people is the extent to which every scrap and grain of its resources are utilized. The motto of a prosperous nation is: "Gather up the fragments that nothing be lost."

That the last few years have seen such an increase in the production of wealth as has never been known before in the history of the world is not to be wondered at when it is realized that in every department of industry those things that had been previously thrown away have become a source of revenue, and, in some cases, the by-product has become of more value than the original product itself.

The recovery of wealth from waste is the distinguishing mark of the age, because this is the age of industrial civilization. If the increase in the production of wealth is greater and more rapid than it has ever been since man first landed on this earth, without either a penny or a pocket to put the penny in, it is due to the general extension of methods that have been in use ever since he began to try to pick a living out of the clinched fist of dour old Mother Nature.

The delicate perfumes of flowers that otherwise would vanish in a day are trapped in lard, and then snared again from the lard by alcohol. The crusted argols that gather on the inside of the vats where wine ferments are utilized to make the cream of tartar for our biscuits.

Tin Pans for Complexions.

The bloom of health that glows upon the cheeks of the ladies of the chorus may be traced to the tin pans and cups that jingle on the rag-collector's wagon. These homely and prosaic vessels are made of plates of iron, coated, all too thinly in these degenerate days, with tin.

These iron plates have to be "pickled," as the trade phrase goes. All the rust and other substances than the clean iron have to be washed off with acids and water. The pickling liquor is not emptied out as slops by any means. There is a finely divided iron rust floating in it, and when the water is removed by evaporating it, the residue is Venetian red and iron pigment that, made up as rouge, can counterfeit the ruddy blood that courses so near the surface of the satin skin of youth.

It is almost a personal triumph to us to know that the broken bits of rock from the quarry, unfit to use as building material, are turned into crushed stone, for which there is so large a demand, thanks to the increasing popularity of concrete, and that its revenues pay the operating expenses of the quarry, and make the price got from building stone so much clear money.

Illuminating-gas has to be washed and scrubbed anyhow before it can be introduced into our houses. The household ammonia with which the kitchen sink is kept so sweet is taken by the thousand tons from the scrub-water of the gas-house and the furnace-gas of iron-works.

Only the Pig's Squeal Gets Away.

Meat packers will tell you that nowadays they save everything but the pig's last dying squeal. Naturally, the hides and skins of the animals slaughtered are worth saving. The tips of cows' horns are used for the mouthpieces of pipes; the horns themselves are split and pressed flat, and combs, the backs of brushes, and large buttons are made of them. What bits and splinters are too small to be worked up go for fertilizer.

Hoofs are sorted by colors. The white ones go to Japan, there to be made up into ornaments of artistic merit. We haven't got that far along ourselves. The striped ones stay here to be made up into buttons. The black ones are utilized in the manufacture of cyanide of potash, by which gold is extracted from low-grade ores it formerly did not pay to work.

The bones in the feet of cattle bear up a great weight, so they are hard and take a high polish. They can be used instead of ivory, which is getting scarce. Tooth-brush handles and cutlery handles are made of these bones. The others in the skeleton are built of lime stuck together with glue and molded into shape by the push and pull of muscles.

The soft bones of the head, shoulders, ribs, and breast do not need to be so stiff as the bones of the legs; they have more glue in proportion to lime than the leg-bones. The animal needs a kind of flexible, weather-proof varnish flowed over it, so to speak, to protect the tissues. Glue is what makes this coat or hide. So from bones and scraps and trimmings of hide this glue or gelatin is soaked out. Even the bones on which meat has been cooked have some little dribs of gelatin and fat in them, and these are stewed under pressure until there is nothing left in them of the gelatin, of which they now make the little capsules in which the druggist puts the medicine whose taste we don't just fancy, and fats which go to the soap-maker for the want of a better destination.

Drugs from Dead Cattle.

From the bodies of cows is obtained the tallow which is made into oleomargarin.

The prevailing ailment of the American people is dyspepsia, which is due to a natural lack of pepsin. But it has been found out that the pig's pepsin will do as well as our own, so it is prepared for the drug-trade and sold at considerably above the price per pound of the hog on the hoof.

There are all sorts of obscure nervous troubles which can be very materially helped by a substance extracted from the gray matter of calves' brains.