Chapter I: Part 1

THE SCRAP BOOK.

Vol. I. JULY, 1906. No. 5.

PATRIOTISM.

BY SIR WALTER SCOTT.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
"This is my own, my native land!"
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burn'd
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?
If such there breathe, go, mark him well!
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim--
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentered all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung
Unwept, unhonor'd, and unsung.

"Lay of the Last Minstrel," Canto VI.

The Latest Viewpoints of Men Worth While

An Old Business Man Testifies to the Progress the World Has
Made Since Seventy Years Ago--Lewis Carroll's Advice on
Mental Nutrition--Rudyard Kipling Defines What Literature
Is--Richard Mansfield Holds That All Men Are
Actors--Professor Thomas Advances Reasons for
Spelling-Reform--Helen Keller Pictures the Tragedy of
Blindness--With Other Expressions of Opinion From Men of
Light and Leading.

_Compiled and edited for_ THE SCRAP BOOK.

INSIDE FACTS ABOUT THE "GOOD OLD TIMES."

Stephen A. Knight, an Aged Cotton Manufacturer,
Tells of Work and Wages
Seventy Years Ago.

The more deeply one looks into the conditions of life in the "good old times" the more likely is he to find reason for exclaiming, "Thank Heaven, I live in the Now!" Life held out comparatively little for the American working man three-quarters of a century ago. Wages were very small, education was exceedingly hard to obtain, and the comforts of life were few in comparison with the present time.

At the recent meeting of the National Association of Cotton Manufacturers, in Boston, Stephen A. Knight, of Providence, a former president of the association, gave his reminiscences of old-time mill work. Mr. Knight began as a bobbin boy in a mill at Coventry, Rhode Island, in 1835. After the lapse of seventy years he says:

My work was to put in the roving on a pair of mules
containing two hundred and fifty-six spindles. It required
three hands--a spinner, a fore side piecer, and a back
boy--to keep that pair of mules in operation. The spinner
who worked alongside of me died about two years ago at the
age of one hundred and three, an evidence that all do not
die young who spend their early life in a cotton-mill. I am
hoping to go one better.

The running time for that mill, on an average, was about
fourteen hours per day. In the summer months we went in as
early as we could see, worked about an hour and a half, and
then had a half-hour for breakfast. At twelve o'clock we had
another half-hour for dinner, and then we worked until the
stars were out.

From September 20 until March 20 we went to work at five
o'clock in the morning and came out at eight o'clock at
night, having the same hours for meals as in the
summer-time.

For my services I was allowed forty-two cents per week,
which, being analyzed, was seven cents per day, or one-half
cent per hour.

Old-Time Profit Makers.

The proprietor of that mill was accustomed to make a
contract with his help on the first day of April for the
coming year. That contract was supposed to be sacred, and it
was looked upon as a disgrace to ignore the contracts thus
made. On one of these anniversaries a mother with several
children suggested to the proprietor that the pay seemed
small.

The proprietor replied: "You get enough to eat, don't you?"

The mother said: "Just enough to keep the wolf from the
door."

He then remarked, "You get enough clothes to wear, don't
you?" to which she answered, "Barely enough to cover our
nakedness."

"Well," said the proprietor, "we want the rest." And that
proprietor, on the whole, was as kind and considerate to his
help as was any other manufacturer at that time.

The opportunities for an education among the factory help
were exceedingly limited, as you can well see, both from the
standpoint of time and from the standpoint of money.

But, gentlemen, we are living in better days. We work less
hours, get better pay, live in better homes, and have better
opportunities to obtain an education.

In place of eighty-four hours we now work fifty-eight hours
per week, a difference of twenty-six hours, and as an
employer of help I am glad of it. We are not allowed to
employ children at the tender age that was in vogue
seventy-one years ago; as an employer of help, I am glad of
that.

We get better pay for our services. There is at least an
advance of two hundred per cent, and in many cases more than
that.

More Opportunity To-Day.

We live in better homes; our houses are larger, better
finished, and kept in better repair. When I was a boy, if we
wanted a room re-papered or painted, or even whitewashed, we
had to do it at our own expense. It is quite different now.
Every village of any size employs painters and other help
enough to keep our houses in good, neat, and healthy
condition, while the sanitary condition receives especial
care. Many of our employees have homes of their own, built
with money earned in our manufactories--a thing almost
unknown seventy years ago.

I have many times been asked if, in my opinion, the young
man of to-day had as good a chance to make his mark in the
business world as did his elders? My answer is--never since
our Pilgrim Fathers landed on the shores of Plymouth were
the opportunities for the young man's success greater than
they are to-day. It is for him to determine whether he will
be a success or not. The gates and the avenues are open to
him, and it is for him to elect whether he will or will not
avail himself of the golden opportunities awaiting him.

Such a comparison as Mr. Knight draws from his actual experience does the work of volumes of argument. That the span of one man's life could bridge extremes so widely separated is evidence enough that our country has made remarkable progress.

GIVING THE MIND ITS THREE SQUARE MEALS.

A Paper by the Late Lewis Carroll, in
Which the Desirability of Feeding the
Intellect Is Dwelt Upon.

The late Lewis Carroll was, first of all, professionally a mathematician, though few readers of "the Alice books" knew it. And his name, of course, was Charles L. Dodgson, and he wrote mathematical treatises. To the time of his death--he was born in 1832 and died in 1898--his readers hoped for more volumes like "Alice in Wonderland" or "The Hunting of the Snark," but Mr. Dodgson's literary output was small. The May _Harper's_ reprints a hitherto unpublished paper from his pen, on "Feeding the Mind," in which he says:

Breakfast, dinner, tea; in extreme cases, breakfast,
luncheon, dinner, tea, supper, and a glass of something hot
at bedtime. What care we take about feeding the lucky body!
Which of us does as much for his mind? And what causes the
difference? Is the body so much the more important of the
two?

By no means; but life depends on the body being fed, whereas
we can continue to exist as animals (scarcely as men) though
the mind be utterly starved and neglected. Therefore, Nature
provides that in case of serious neglect of the body such
terrible consequences of discomfort and pain shall ensue as
will soon bring us back to a sense of our duty; and some of
the functions necessary to life she does for us altogether,
leaving us no choice in the matter.

It would fare but ill with many of us if we were left to
superintend our own digestion and circulation. "Bless me!"
one would cry, "I forgot to wind up my heart this morning!
To think that it has been standing still for the last three
hours!" "I can't walk with you this afternoon," a friend
would say, "as I have no less than eleven dinners to digest.
I had to let them stand over from last week, being so
busy--and my doctor says he will not answer for the
consequences if I wait any longer!"

Well it is, I say, for us that the consequences of
neglecting the body can be clearly seen and felt; and it
might be well for some if the mind were equally visible and
tangible--if we could take it, say, to the doctor and have
its pulse felt.

"Why, what have you been doing with this mind lately? How
have you fed it? It looks pale, and the pulse is very slow."

"Well, doctor, it has not had much regular food lately. I
gave it a lot of sugar-plums yesterday."

"Sugar-plums! What kind?"

"Well, they were a parcel of conundrums, sir."

"Ah! I thought so. Now just mind this: if you go on playing
tricks like that you'll spoil all its teeth and get laid up
with mental indigestion. You must have nothing but the
plainest reading for the next few days. Take care, now! No
novels on any account!"

KIPLING'S ANALYSIS OF TRUE LITERATURE.

The Masterless Man With the Magic of
the Necessary Words, and the
Record of the Tribe.

At the anniversary banquet of the Royal Academy, in London, May 5, Rudyard Kipling responded to the toast of "Literature." In that lean English of his, with all its evidence of fine condition, he made plain, as he understands it, the meaning of literature and its relation to life. It is the story of the tribe, told, not by the men of action, who are dumb, but by the masterless men who possess the magic of the necessary words.

We quote the address from the London _Times_:

There is an ancient legend which tells us that when a man
first achieved a most notable deed he wished to explain to
his tribe what he had done. As soon as he began to speak,
however, he was smitten with dumbness, he lacked words, and
sat down.

Then there arose--according to the story--a masterless man,
one who had taken no part in the action of his fellow, who
had no special virtues, but afflicted--that is the
phrase--with the magic of the necessary words. He saw, he
told, he described the merits of the notable deed in such a
fashion, we are assured, that the words "became alive and
walked up and down in the hearts of all his hearers."

Thereupon the tribe, seeing that the words were certainly
alive, and fearing lest the man with the words would hand
down untrue tales about them to their children, took and
killed him. But later they saw that the magic was in the
words, not in the man.

We have progressed in many directions since the time of this
early and destructive criticism, but so far we do not seem
to have found a sufficient substitute for the necessary word
as the final record to which all achievement must look.

Even to-day, when all is done, those who have done it must
wait until all has been said by the masterless man with the
words. It is certain that the overwhelming bulk of those
words will perish in the future as they have perished in the
past; it is true that a minute fraction will continue to
exist, and by the light of these words, and by that light
only, will our children be able to judge of the phases of
our generation. Now, we desire beyond all things to stand
well with our children, but when our story comes to be told
we do not know who will have the telling of it.

Too Close to the Tellers.

We are too close to the tellers; there are many tellers, and
they are all talking together; and even if we knew them we
must not kill them. But the old and terrible instinct which
taught our ancestors to kill the original story-teller warns
us that we shall not be far wrong if we challenge any man
who shows signs of being afflicted with the magic of the
necessary words.

May not this be the reason why, without any special
legislation on its behalf, literature has always stood a
little outside the law as the one calling that is absolutely
free--free in the sense that it needs no protection?

For instance, if, as occasionally happens, a judge makes a
bad law, or a surgeon a bad operation, or a manufacturer
makes bad food, criticism upon their actions is by law and
custom confined to comparatively narrow limits. But if a
man, as occasionally happens, makes a book, there is no
limit to the criticism that may be directed against it, and
it is perfectly as it should be. The world recognizes that
little things, like bad law, bad surgery, and bad food, only
affect the cheapest commodity that we know about--human
life.

Therefore, in these circumstances, men can afford to be
swayed by pity for the offender, by interest in his family,
by fear, or loyalty, or respect for the organization he
represents, or even a desire to do him justice.

But when the question is of words--words that may become
alive and walk up and down in the hearts of the hearers--it
is then that this world of ours, which is disposed to take
an interest in the future, feels instinctively that it is
better that a thousand innocent people should be punished
than that one guilty word should be preserved, carrying that
which is an untrue tale of the tribe.

Remote Chances of a Tale's Survival.

The chances, of course, are almost astronomically remote
that any given tale will survive for so long as it takes an
oak to grow to timber size. But that guiding instinct warns
us not to trust to chance a matter of the supremest concern.
In this durable record, if anything short of indisputable
and undistilled truth be seen there, we all feel, How shall
our achievements profit us?

The record of the tribe is in its enduring literature. The
magic of literature lies in the words, and not in any man.
Witness, a thousand excellent, strenuous words can leave us
quite cold or put us to sleep, whereas a bare half-hundred
words breathed upon by some man in his agony, or in his
exaltation, or in his idleness, ten generations ago, can
still lead a whole nation into and out of captivity, can
open to us the doors of three worlds, or stir us so
intolerably that we can scarcely abide to look at our own
souls.

It is a miracle--one that happens very seldom. But secretly
each one of the masterless men with the words has hope, or
has had hope, that the miracle may be wrought again through
him.

And why not? If a tinker in Bedford jail, if a
pamphleteering shopkeeper pilloried in London, if a muzzy
Scotsman, if a despised German Jew, or a condemned French
thief, or an English admiralty official with a taste for
letters can be miraculously afflicted with the magic of the
necessary words, why not any man at any time?

Our world, which is only concerned in the perpetuation of
the record, sanctions that hope as kindly and just as
cruelly as nature sanctions love. All it suggests is that
the man with the words shall wait upon the man of
achievement, and step by step with him try to tell the story
to the tribe. All it demands is that the magic of every word
shall be tried out to the very uttermost by every means
fair and foul that the mind of man can suggest.

There is no room, and the world insists that there shall be
no room, for pity, for mercy, for respect, for fear, or even
for loyalty, between man and his fellow man, when the record
of the tribe comes to be written.

That record must satisfy, at all costs to the word and to
the man behind the word. It must satisfy alike the keenest
vanity and the deepest self-knowledge of the present; it
must satisfy also the most shameless curiosity of the
future. When it has done this it is literature of which will
be said in due time that it fitly represents its age.

"MEN AND WOMEN MERELY PLAYERS."

The Man as an Actor and the Actor as
a Man--an Interchangeable Definition
and a Defense of Simulation.

Richard Mansfield's paper in the May _Atlantic_, "Man and the Actor," is a defense of the stage on the ground that all mankind are actors. He takes as his text the lines of Shakespeare:

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano,
A stage where every man must play a part.

Great men, says Mr. Mansfield, owe their preeminence largely to their histrionic ability. In other words, theatrical behavior is, in man, not a weakness, but a sign of strength--not something to be avoided, but something to be cultivated.

The stage cannot be held in contempt by mankind; because all
mankind is acting, and every human being is playing a part.
The better a man plays his part, the better he succeeds. The
more a man knows of the art of acting, the greater the man;
for, from the king on his throne to the beggar in the
street, every man is acting. There is no greater comedian or
tragedian in the world than a great king.

The knowledge of the art of acting is indispensable to a
knowledge of mankind, and when you are able to pierce the
disguise in which every man arrays himself, or to read the
character which every man assumes, you achieve an intimate
knowledge of your fellow men, and you are able to cope with
the man, either as he is or as he pretends to be.

It was necessary for Shakespeare to be an actor in order to
know men. Without his knowledge of the stage Shakespeare
could never have been the reader of men that he was. And yet
we are asked, "Is the stage worth while?"

The Histrionic Napoleon.

Napoleon and Alexander were both great actors--Napoleon
perhaps the greatest actor the world has ever seen. Whether
on the bridge of Lodi or in his camp at Tilsit; whether
addressing his soldiers in the plains of Egypt; whether
throwing open his old gray coat and saying, "Children, will
you fire on your general?" whether bidding farewell to them
at Fontainebleau; whether standing on the deck of the
Bellerophon or on the rocks of St. Helena--he was always an
actor.

Napoleon had studied the art of acting, and he knew its
value. If the power of the eye, the power of the voice, the
power of that all-commanding gesture of the hand, failed him
when he faced the regiment of veterans on his return from
Elba, he was lost.

But he had proved and compelled his audience too often for
his art to fail him then. The leveled guns fell. The
audience was his. Another crown had fallen! By what? A trick
of the stage!

Was he willing to die then, to be shot by his old guard? Not
he! Did he doubt for one moment his ability as an actor? Not
he! If he had, he would have been lost. And that power to
control, that power to command, once it is possessed by a
man, means that that man can play his part anywhere, and
under all circumstances and conditions.

Unconsciously or consciously, every great man, every man who
has played a great part, has been an actor. Each man, every
man, who has made his mark has chosen his character, the
character best adapted to himself, and has played it, and
clung to it, and made his impress with it.

I have but to conjure up the figure of Daniel Webster, who
never lost an opportunity to act; or General Grant, who
chose for his model William of Orange, surnamed the Silent.
You will find every one of your most admired heroes choosing
early in life some admired hero of his own to copy. Who can
doubt that Napoleon had selected Julius Caesar?

Mr. Mansfield goes on to say that inspiration is a kind of hypnotism: a good actor, playing the part of _Hamlet_, is for the time being Hamlet. An old argument is reopened by this assertion. But where some of the great actors have lost themselves in their characters, others have studied their roles as apart from themselves, and have given, with complete control, the results of their study. Doubtless the question which method is the better art will never be settled to the entire satisfaction of every one.

ARE WE WORSHIPERS OF THE BIG DICTIONARY?

Professor Calvin Thomas Says We Revere
Usage Too Greatly--Old Dog Story
Bears Out the Facts of Charge.

The movement for simplified spelling has been attracting many men of mark in literature and the professions. Notions of the strict sanctity of fixed forms of spelling disappear in the light of the historical evidence which the reformers are presenting.

Thus, it is pointed out that from the beginning our spelling has been subject to changes so great that the young schoolboy of to-day cannot read Chaucer without a vocabulary, even with the obsolete words eliminated. Obsolete spellings are too much for him.

The Simplified Spelling Board has reprinted an address delivered before the Modern Language Association by Professor Calvin Thomas, of Columbia University. Describing the difficulty of teaching children our present spelling, he says:

How heavy is the burden, as a matter of sober fact? To this
question it is difficult to give a strictly scientific
answer, because there is no perfectly satisfactory way of
attacking the problem. Literature teems with estimates and
computations of the time and money wasted in one way and
another because of our peculiar spelling; but from the
nature of the case they can only be roughly approximate.

Speaking broadly, it appears that children receive more or
less systematic instruction in spelling throughout the
primary grades--that is, for eight years. If now we suppose
that they pursue on the average five subjects
simultaneously, and that spelling receives equal attention
with the others, we get one year and three-fifths as the
amount of solid school time devoted to this acquirement.

This, however, does not tell the whole story; for many begin
the struggle before they enter school, many continue to need
instruction in the high school, and even in college, and not
a few walk through life with an orthographic lameness which
causes them to suffer in comfort and reputation. Probably
two years and a half would be nearer the mark as a gross
estimate of the average time consumed in learning to spell
more or less accurately.

We have now to ask: How much of this time is wasted? How
much must we deduct for the reasonable requirements of the
case? Zealous reformers often assume that it is practically
all wasted. They tell us that if we had a proper system of
spelling the acquisition of the art in childhood would take
care of itself after a little elementary instruction. This
may be so, but we have no means of proving positively that
it is so.

If any people in the world had an ideal system of spelling,
we might go to them and find out how long it takes their
children to learn spelling. But there is no such people; and
so we are forced back upon such rough and general
statements--perfectly true in themselves--as that German and
Italian children learn to spell much more easily and quickly
than do our own children.

Meanwhile, it is hardly fair to take as one term of
comparison an ideal condition which never existed and never
will exist. An alphabet must always be a rough instrument of
practical convenience. Very certainly our posterity will
never adopt any thoroughgoing system of phonetic spelling.

Nothing is going to be changed _per saltum_. The most we can
hope for is a gradual improvement, accelerated, perhaps, by
wisely directed effort. This means that spelling will always
have to be learned and taught, and that considerable time
will have to be devoted to it.

Language Has to Change.

As to the too common belief that spellings should never be changed, Professor Thomas says:

What is needed is to prepare the way for a generation whose
feelings shall be somewhat different from ours--a generation
that shall have less reverence than we have for what is
called usage.

During the last hundred and fifty years we have become a
race of dictionary-worshipers, and we have gone so far in
our blind, unreasonable subserviency to an artificial
standard that the time has come for a reaction. We need to
reconquer and assert for ourselves something of that liberty
which Shakespeare and Milton enjoyed. We need to claim the
natural right of every living language to grow and change to
suit the convenience of those who use it. This right belongs
to the written language no less than to the spoken.

We have the same right to make usage that Steele and Addison
and Dr. Johnson had; and there is just as much merit in
making usage as in following it.

The Tale of a Dog.

To gain an idea of the extent to which usage has changed in three hundred years, it is necessary only to read the following dog story, which was first recorded in 1587, and was reprinted lately by the London _Chronicle_:

Item--We present yt at the tyme of our sytting ther hath ben
complaynt made of another dogg, betwene a masty & a
mungerell, of Peter Quoyte's which hath stronng qualyties by
himselfe, which goyng lose abrode doth many times offend the
neyghbors & wyll fetch owt of ther howses whole peces of
meate, as loynes of mutton & veal & such lyke & a pasty of
venson or a whole pownde of candells at a tyme, & will not
spoyle yt by the way but cary yt whole to his masters howse,
which being a profytable dogg for his master, yet because he
is offensyffe to many yt is not sufferable, wherfor his
master hath forfeyt for every time 3s. 4d. And be yt
comaunded to kepe him tyed or to putt him away upon payn to
forfeyte for every tyme he shalbe found in the streets 3s.
4d.

This story takes on significance from the comment of the New York _Times_:

There, now, is a fine specimen of Shakespearian spelling,
for it is dated 1587. Even this, of course, is itself the
flower of numberless reformations and changes, all in the
direction of simplicity and phonetic--or intended to be. It
is at least as different from the so-called long-established
spelling as is that of the letters contributed to our
columns occasionally by correspondents who think they are
showing by horrible examples the dreadful orthography to
which the Carnegie iconoclasts would reduce us all.

But what a fine dog story it is, and how quaintly phrased!
And how magnanimous is the admission that the animal
"betwene a masty and a mungerell," though addicted to
larceny, "hath stronng qualyties of himselfe"!

The man who made the record was evidently a lover and a
judge of dogs, and the implication is that a "mungerell" was
then regarded as belonging to a breed of his own as much as
did a "masty." This indicates that our use of the word
"mongrel" is a misuse, though the accepted etymology
supports us.

WHAT HAS BECOME OF OLD-TIME GENTLEMEN?

"Chivalry Is a Fiction," Says a Southern
Woman, and Several Southern Journals
Support Her Statement.

A Southern woman said not long ago: "You know, one hears so much about 'Southern gentlemen and Southern chivalry,' when, as a matter of fact, gentlemen are exceptions and chivalry is fiction. Of course, I allow a few exceptions." Such a remark, coming from a Southern woman, has naturally created discussion at the South. We will give the opinions of two journals. Says the Columbia (South Carolina) _State_:

After studying the subject and hearing the complaints of
women who in honorable professional capacities travel
through the South, as recorded in the _State_ yesterday, one
is impelled to admit that the above opinion by a Southern
woman who has traveled in all parts of this country has too
much foundation.

That verdict is not pleasant to hear. It will not be
generally accepted; at least every one hearing it will
immediately vote himself one of the "exceptions."
Nevertheless, there have recently been public acts that
support it in South Carolina, North Carolina, and Texas, and
it is well that the degree of truth it contains be
recognized.

The Macon _Telegraph_ finds a reason for the conditions thus described.

The _Telegraph_ feels disposed to remark in this connection
that for three-quarters of a century there has been entirely
too much boasting about Southern "gentlemen" and Southern
"chivalry."

A gentleman does not call attention to his own virtues, and
neither should a section through its orators and newspapers
boast incessantly of its superiority to the rest of the
world in its treatment of women.

The result of it all has been that too many Southern youth
have imagined that they had nothing to learn, and too many
Southern men have regarded themselves as gentlemen and
supposed that they were brimming over with "chivalry" when
nothing of the sort was true.

And there is another side to this question which should be
mentioned in justice to all concerned. In our day
respectable women are by no means all of the class described
as the saintly angels of the home, who rouse all the
chivalrous instincts of a gentleman, whether he be a
resident of South Carolina, South Dakota, or Kamchatka.

In our day women are facing men as competitors in business
and in the professions. The modern woman of the advanced
type refuses to be longer regarded as a gentler and
saintlier type of humanity, who must be petted, reverenced,
and protected. She prefers to renounce her former
superiority of a certain kind for an equality which
essentially involves a different plane of communication.

That all this foreshadows a certain modification of the
old-time approved relations between the sexes is as obvious
as it is inevitable.

WHAT WE ARE DOING TO THE RED MAN.

Recent Abolishment of Tribal Rule in Indian
Territory Will Have Powerful
Effect for Good or Ill.

Are we all to be Indians? There are ethnologists who say that in successive generations the features of Americans are gradually succumbing to the persistent influence of their climatic environment; that a few centuries will see us a race, high-cheek-boned, Roman-nosed.

Frederick R. Burton touches the question in the London _Sphere_. He says:

As I have studied the Indian in the field I have been
interested in speculating--in an unscientific way, for my
research was not concerned with physical characteristics--on
the possible chance of the Indian's features consequent upon
his advancing civilization. Indeed, I have often thought,
though imagined may be the better word, that in Indians of
education I have observed a distinct softening of the
traditional type and an approximation to the features of the
European.

The Indian is becoming civilized very rapidly. His
appearance has already undergone great change through his
general disregard of native dress, and after a few
generations of living indoors and under bowler hats, is it
not reasonable to suppose that he will look more like the
Yankee than he does now, and thus justify the
anthropologist's theory by a reversal of the process of
reasoning?

The Indian, indeed, is rapidly being absorbed. On the 4th of last March tribal government was abolished in the Indian Territory. The so-called Five Civilized Tribes, numbering, all told, one hundred and two thousand souls, and claiming to have enjoyed continuous independent civil government since long before Columbus discovered America, are now just plain citizens of the United States. The tribal land has been divided among them, to be owned by individuals in fee simple; the right to vote has been extended to them; their separate, independent constitutions, legislatures, and judiciaries have entirely disappeared.

The Rev. W.B. Humphrey, of New York, is president of the National Indian Association. Speaking of the changed position of the Indians, he said recently, as quoted by the New York _Tribune_:

The Indian has long been the "ward" of the government. Our
statesmen have found this to be a mistake, for it relieves
him of all responsibility of providing for himself or of
taking care of himself. This policy was found to pauperize
him and to unfit him for the competitions of civilized life.
In fact it left him as much of a heathen as when our
forefathers first discovered him, wandering in the woods or
over prairies, the monarch of all he surveyed.

We have taken his land from him and pushed him beyond our
frontier. But now that the country which was once his has
been so fully settled up, there are no more frontiers over
which we can push him. This being so, our statesmen have
wisely decided to make the Indian an integral part of our
Union. This they are doing by breaking up his tribal
relation, giving him land in severalty as fast as he can be
prevailed upon to accept it, and by giving him the ballot.

The Indian is thus having civilization thrust upon him all
at once, though quite unprepared for its responsibilities.
He is made the victim of the land grabber, the shyster
lawyer, and the saloon keeper--powerful forces which he is
unable to resist in his present condition.

Dr. Charles A. Eastman, a full-blooded Sioux, who has shown in his own development what the Indian may become with education, is quoted by the _Tribune_ as saying:

I do not believe in trying to delay the inevitable
absorption of my race into the dominant white race of this
country. The sooner that absorption is accomplished, the
sooner the "Indian question" comes to an end, the better it
will be for all of us--and this desired result will surely
be hastened by letting down the bars in Indian Territory. As
for the liquor question, every individual Indian must solve
that for himself, just as he must solve everything else, as
an independent citizen of this country, not as a "ward," a
condition that brought with it no responsibilities.

There are between two and three hundred thousand Indians in
the United States altogether, but of real Indian customs and
beliefs there is very little left. It is only the showman
class that does the dances and wears feathers and beads, and
all the rest of the masquerading that goes to make up some
Buffalo Bill entertainment. But there is no sincerity in
such manifestations now; the real reason underlying these
things is buried in the past, when the Indian stood alone,
the maker of his own laws and customs, and not a government
ward.

Now the problem for my race is, how best to adapt itself to
the conditions belonging to the white man's civilization, to
make these his own, and, hence, to emancipate itself from
its present degraded position. This will not be accomplished
by insisting on the racial isolation, the government
protection, that we have had heretofore.

It is a difficult problem, though, simply because the Indian
character and tradition are so different from the dominant
type of the white man, and thus so difficult of
assimilation. During all the centuries of our existence as a
people we have been accustomed to live under a system of
pure Socialism. Every Indian fought and accumulated property
for his tribe, not for himself. It was the tribal, not the
individual, welfare that engrossed him. But the white man's
world is different, and the Indian must undergo a
fundamental change in order to adapt himself to it.

You see, as a race, we are absolutely ignorant of commercial
matters, how to make money--and this is essentially an age
of commercialism. The Indian is rather of a philosophical
temperament, not practical, with very little artistic
development. Some of us make good minor mechanics,
carpenters, blacksmiths, etc. But the inherited tendency of
the race is still away from the keen, matter-of-fact rivalry
and hard-headed wisdom that is at the basis of the modern
world's activity--trade.

Dr. Eastman is at present engaged in a unique task. Under the auspices of the government, he is renaming the Indians--going to the various Sioux reservations and giving to each person a practical name. When the old names are not too unwieldy he retains them; otherwise he at least tries to perpetuate in the new name some trace of the old.

MEN NOW LIVING FOR THE SAKE OF AN IDEA.

Expressions of Devotion to the Revolutionary
Cause Compared With Czar's
Address to the Duma.

Gorky, Narodny, Maxime, and other Russian revolutionists who have lately visited the United States to further their propaganda are men who are living for an idea.

Read Narodny's rhapsody on Russian freedom, as written for the May _American Magazine_ by Leroy Scott:

I am nothing. Personal success, happiness--they are nothing.
Burning of home, prison, the Czar's bullet, Siberia--they
are nothing. There is only one thing--only one thing--that
Russia shall be free!...

I have been in this America one week, and already do I not
speak the English language fluently! But I shall it learn!
Then to American peoples will I speak the sufferings of
Russian peoples. I will say, "Help us be free!" and they
will help; they are rich--their hearts are great.

Then--oh, my Russia!--freedom!

"I have come from below," Maxim Gorky has written, "from the very depths of life." And again: "Slowly have I climbed from the bottom of life to its surface, and on my way I have watched everything with the greedy eyes of a scout going to the promised land." This is the man who said at a dinner in New York:

I come to America expecting to find true and warm
sympathizers among the American people for my suffering
countrymen, who are fighting so hard and bearing so bravely
their martyrdom for freedom. Now is the time for the
revolution. Now is the time for the overthrow of Czardom.
Now! Now! Now! But we need the sinews of war; the blood we
will give ourselves. We need money, money, money. I come to
you as a beggar, that Russia may be free.

By ignoring social conventions Gorky has unwittingly injured his cause. It may be said of him, however, that he is to-day one of the foremost literary figures of the world, and is so regarded in Europe. He has abandoned literary ambition and the easy life of a feted idol to serve an idea--the idea of full Russian freedom.

With these words of men whose passion is liberty for their country may be compared the speech of the Czar at the opening of the new Russian Duma. The occasion and the utterance are already historical.

The Supreme Providence which gave me the care of our
fatherland moved me to call to my assistance in legislative
work elected representatives of the people. In the
expectation of a brilliant future for Russia, I greet in
your persons the best men from the empire, whom I ordered my
beloved subjects to choose from among themselves.

A difficult work lies before you. I trust that love for your
fatherland and your earnest desire to serve it will inspire
and unite you. I shall keep inviolate the institutions which
I have granted, with the firm assurance that you will devote
all your strength to the service of your country, and
especially to the needs of the peasantry, which are so close
to my heart, and to the education of the people and their
economical welfare, remembering that to the dignity and
prosperity of the state not only freedom but order founded
upon justice is necessary.

I desire from my heart to see my people happy, and hand down
to my son an empire secure, well organized, and enlightened.
May God bless the work that lies before me in unity with the
Council of the Empire and the Imperial Duma. May this day be
the day of the moral revival of Russia and the day for the
renewal of its highest forces. Approach with solemnity the
labors for which I call you, and be worthy of the
responsibilities put upon you by the emperor and people. May
God assist us!

Students the world over are now recalling dubiously the fateful French States-General of 1789.

FROM THOSE WHO LIVE IN DARKNESS.

A Pathetic Picture of the Sadness of
Being Blind, Drawn for Us by
One Who Has Never Seen.

Helen Keller, the marvelous deaf and blind girl, whose life would be pathetic, were it not so great a triumph over the limitations of silence and darkness, keeps close to her fellows through the sense of touch. One would think that, knowing others to have so much which she can never have, her outlook would be sorrowful. But she is no pessimist. We who can see are more depressed by our apparent inability to solve the mysteries of a future life, or to prevent injustice in this, than is she by the physical helplessness of blindness.

That the lot of the blind is sad, she nevertheless admits. A meeting was held in New York a few weeks ago in the interests of the blind. The principal speakers were Joseph H. Choate and Mark Twain. From a sick bed Miss Keller had written a letter, which Mark Twain read to the assembled audience, prefacing it with the statement that it deserved a place among the classics of literature. Her picture of the sadness of being blind was as follows:

To know what the blind man needs, you who can see must
imagine what it would be not to see, and you can imagine it
more vividly if you remember that before your journey's end
you may have to go the dark way yourself. Try to realize
what blindness means to those whose joyous activity is
stricken to inaction.

It is to live long, long days--and life is made up of days.
It is to live immured, baffled, impotent, all God's world
shut out. It is to sit helpless, defrauded, while your
spirit strains and tugs at its fetters and your shoulders
ache for the burden they are denied, the rightful burden of
labor.

The seeing man goes about his business confident and
self-dependent. He does his share of the work of the world
in mine, in quarry, in factory, in counting-room, asking of
others no boon save the opportunity to do a man's part and
to receive the laborer's guerdon.

In an instant accident blinds him. The day is blotted out.
Night envelops all the visible world. The feet which once
bore him to his task with firm and confident stride stumble
and halt and fear the forward step. He is forced to a new
habit of idleness, which, like a canker, consumes the mind
and destroys its faculties.

Memory confronts him with his lighted past. Amid the
tangible ruins of his life as it promised to be he gropes
his pitiful way.

Richard Watson Gilder wrote for this occasion a poem, which was printed on the programs.

"Pity the Blind!" Yes, pity those
Whom day and night enclose
In equal dark; to whom the sun's keen flame
And pitchy night-time are the same;
But pity most the blind
Who cannot see
That to be kind
Is life's felicity.

THE WEALTH OF ONE IS THE ASSET OF ALL.

The Man Who Taps the Common Treasury
for His Own Pocket Is a Judas,
Says Dr. Parkhurst.

Many expressions of socialistic or quasi-socialistic opinion have lately been written and spoken by men and women whose opinions are worth reading and hearing. From among these expressions the following letter by the Rev. Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst may be selected as typical of American socialistic idealism. It accepts a principle; it proposes no method. It was written to Charles Sprague Smith, director of the People's Institute, at Cooper Union, New York, to be read before the institute in lieu of an address.

The one doctrine I would specialize (meaning one to be dwelt
on in the institute work) is that of the solidarity of the
race, or, to revert to your own more usual way of stating
it, the brotherhood of man.

You stand for a great truth every time you put it before
your people that we are not our own, but that we belong to
each other; that we are all children of one household; that
we belong to the family and the family belongs to us; that
the assets of the family are the joint property of all the
children; and that any man, rich or poor, who treats his
particular holdings, large or small, as though they were not
in the truest sense a part of the common holdings of the
entire household is a renegade and a traitor to the
household.

If it is charged upon me that this smacks of socialism, all
I can say is that I do not care what you call it; it is the
doctrine that I preach in the Madison Square Presbyterian
Church, and if it is good for Madison Square it is good for
Cooper Union; anyhow, it is biblical, and contains in it a
good deal of the genius of the teaching of Jesus Christ.

Brotherhood involves reciprocity of rights and duties, but
it means that we all need each other, are all debtors to
each other, and are all intended to be trustees of the
common assets, and that any man who cuts an underground
conduit between the common treasury and his own pocket is a
modern reproduction of the original Judas, who carried the
bag and drew from it to meet his personal expenses.

WHAT A CHINESE SAYS ABOUT CHINA'S FUTURE.

Waves of Progress Are Now Sweeping
Over the Long Somnolent Flowery
Kingdom, Says Kang Yu Wan.

That there is in China a growing reform movement directed by leaders of the younger and more progressive generation is coming to be quite generally known. Kang Yu Wan, the president of the reform association, has been traveling through the United States on his way from Mexico to Europe. In his flowered silk jacket and blue-and-pink cap he looks like a veritable teacup politician. But it will not do to judge the Chinese by their apparel. Mr. Kang is an active reformer, and he is leading an active movement. In a New York interview he talked freely of the new spirit in China, saying, in part:

China is no longer in the Dark Ages. She has already reached
the point where Japan was only twenty years ago.

We have now, for example, more than twenty thousand Chinese
students pursuing advanced modern courses of study. As to
common schools, some five thousand have been started in the
one province of Canton. There are now four million Chinese
who can speak English. Our courts are being remodeled after
the English system.

The number of books we have translated into
Chinese--text-books, technical works, and treatises,
mostly--indicate how extensively the progressive movement is
spreading. We have thus appropriated to our use over ten
thousand American, English, and European works.

China is no longer asleep. She is wide awake, and fully able
to care for her interests.

See what happened a few months ago. There were eight
thousand Chinese students in the schools of Japan, enjoying
equal terms with the Japanese. Japan imposed on these
students some humiliating and unfair conditions.

China Learning Her Resources.

The eight thousand students resigned immediately and left
Japan. Shortly afterward, the Japanese government, in fear
lest the general indignation in China should result in
measures of tariff reprisal, restored the old status, and
the Chinese students returned, having carried their point.

Just as deep a sentiment has been aroused among my
countrymen by your exclusion laws. We see the immigrants
pour into your land from all countries by thousands every
week; while not only is the law-abiding, industrious
Chinaman desirous of making a living unable to come in with
these others, but our most refined and intelligent men
cannot get the mere passports for travel that they can
readily get in any other country.

China now knows her resources and her rights. There will be
no more invasions of China, for she is ready to defend
herself with cannon and with sword, if necessary.

When Mr. Kang was asked about the dreaded outbreaks against foreigners he replied with apparent conviction that there would be no more Boxer rebellions. In his view, education is rapidly conquering the form of ignorance in which anti-foreign movements have their root.

AN EXILE.

By ADAH ISAACS MENKEN.

Adah Isaacs Menken was one of those restless spirits who suffer from their own unsatisfying versatility. Daughter of a Spanish Jew and a Frenchwoman, she was born, Dolores Adios Fuertes, near New Orleans, June 15, 1835. At the age of seven years she made a successful stage appearance as a dancer. She became very popular, especially at Havana, where she was known as "Queen of the Plaza." At twenty she was married to Alexander Isaacs Menken, at Galveston, Texas, retired from the stage, and published a volume of poems, "Memories." Divorced from her husband, she returned to the stage in 1858, but soon abandoned it to study sculpture.

In 1859 she was married to John C. Heenan, the pugilist, from whom she was divorced three years later. Twice again she was married before her death, at Paris, August 10, 1868. In the tragedy of misdirected genius she filled a pathetic role.

Where is the promise of my years
Once written on my brow--
Ere errors, agonies, and fears
Brought with them all that speak in tears,
Ere I had sunk beneath my peers--
Where sleeps that promise now?

Naught lingers to redeem those hours
Still, still to memory sweet;
The flowers that bloomed in sunny bowers
Are withered all, and Evil towers
Supreme above her sister powers
Of Sorrow and Deceit.

I look along the columned years.
And see Life's riven fane
Just where it fell--amid the jeers
Of scornful lips, whose moaning sneers
Forever hiss within my ears
To break the sleep of pain.

I can but own my life is vain,
A desert void of peace;
I missed the goal I sought to gain--
I missed the measure of the strain
That lulls fame's fever in the brain,
And bids earth's tumult cease.

Myself? Alas for theme so poor!--
A theme but rich in fear;
I stand a wreck on Error's shore,
A specter not within the door,
A homeless shadow evermore,
An exile lingering here!

"KELLY AND BURKE AND SHEA."

At the last banquet of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, in New York, President Roosevelt, the guest of the evening, asked Joseph I.C. Clarke, the president of the "Friendly Sons," to recite "The Fighting Race."

Mr. Clarke wrote this poem at the time of the blowing-up of the Maine. Looking over the list of dead and wounded, he remarked to his wife: "They are all there, as usual--the Irish. Yes, here we've Kelly and Burke and Shea----"

Within two hours he had finished the verses which are now recognized as a lasting tribute to the fighting qualities of the Irishman. The poem makes a point; it also expresses the conviction and the wistful pride of the old veteran.

Mr. Clarke was born in Kingstown, Ireland, July 31, 1846, and came to the United States in 1868. The greater part of his life has been spent in newspaper offices--on the New York _Herald_, 1870-1883; magazine editor of the New York _Journal_, 1883-1895; editor of the _Criterion_, 1898-1900; Sunday editor New York _Herald_, 1903-1905. He is now engaged in writing plays, work which has taken intervals of his time for a number of years.

THE FIGHTING RACE.

BY JOSEPH I.C. CLARKE.

"Read out the names!" and Burke sat back,
And Kelly dropped his head,
While Shea--they call him Scholar Jack--
Went down the list of dead.
Officers, seamen, gunners, marines,
The crews of the gig and yawl,
The bearded man and the lad in his 'teens,
Carpenters, coal-passers--all.
Then, knocking the ashes from out his pipe,
Said Burke in an offhand way:
"We're all in that dead man's list, by Cripe!
Kelly and Burke and Shea."
"Well, here's to the Maine, and I'm sorry for Spain,"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.

"Wherever there's Kellys there's trouble," said Burke.
"Wherever fighting's the game,
Or a spice of danger in grown man's work,"
Said Kelly, "you'll find my name."
"And do we fall short," said Burke, getting mad.
"When it's touch and go for life?"
Said Shea, "It's thirty-odd years, bedad,
Since I charged, to drum and fife,
Up Marye's Heights, and my old canteen
Stopped a rebel ball on its way.
There were blossoms of blood on our sprigs of green--
Kelly and Burke and Shea--
And the dead didn't brag." "Well, here's to the flag!"
Said Kelly and Burke and Shea.