i-L,/;U:aAk;" ■mmmimntimma CHIPS r- FROM MAISTY BLOCKS. BY ELIHU BUEE^ITT, AltTltOR OF " TRN-MINfTK TALKS," " Sl'ARKS FROM THK ANVlIi," "a Vi>ICE FROM TIIK KORGK," RTC, RTC. TORONTO : KOSE-BELFORD PUBLISHING COMPANY. MDCCCLXXVIIT. 145340 B1 es" Entered according to the Act of the Par- llanumt of Canada, in tli»- year on« thousand eight hundred andHeveiity-ei«lit,by the ROSE- BEIFOBD PUBLIBHINO COMPANY, in the OffiCO of tUe MiiUstar of Agnculture. Kntored according to Act of Congress, In tlie year 1878, ))y F.LIHU Bukeitt, In the Otlice of tho Librarian of CongrcHS, at Wash- ington. / NOTE FROM MR. BURRITT. " Ro.sb-Bblpord PuBLisHisro Company, " Dear Sir8, " I send you a short Preface, which I think you will approve. I never felt a more lively interest in the issue of one of my books than in the publication of this volume. I think it will prove the most useful aid inter- esting that I have produced, because I have made chips from more blocks than ever I laid axe to before. " Yours truly, "Elihu Burritt." PREFACE. fT gives me peculiar pleasure to think that the last book I shall be able to make is to be published in Canada, and that Canada now means a Dominion extend- ing across the continent, fiom Newfoundland to Van- couver's Island, embracing educated populations, who are to produce a literature of their own, which shall bear the impress of the mind of a young and growing nation, as- piring to make its intellectual development as honourably recognized by the world, as its political progress and ma- terial prosperity. The idea of contributing a few pages to that literature, at a time when it is beginning to as- sume such a national imprimatur, is especially interesting to me. For, next to the Mother Country, Canada is most associated with the pleasant memories of extensive travels, and kind and genial hospitalities. Indeed, there is hardly a considerable town or village between Halifax and Georgian Bay which I have not visited, and in which I have not received an attentive and sympathetic hear ing from an intelligent audience. And I greatly enjoy the thought, that many of those who thus listened to my VI PREFACE. lectures will read this book and find in it a wide and varied development of those lines of reflection which I suggested to them from the platform so many years ago. Indeed, I have never before put forth in one volume talks on so many different topics as they will find in this, which I now especially dedicate to them, and beg them to receive as if written by a native Canadian. I think they will find something in it that will interest their children, for I regard my one-syllable stories, illustrating the law of kindness, as the happiest success I ever achieved in liter- ary composition. Their older children, I hope, may find what I say to them in the Fireside Talks, suggestive and even helpful in the course of their studies at school. The other departments will perhaps suggest to many thought- ful minds new reflections upon subjects of varied im- portance and interest. Hoping that the Canadian public will give to this vol- ume, bearing the imprimatur of the Dominion, something of the genial reception I shall ever remember in their personal hospitality, I tender them my best wishes for their prosperity in every interest that can promote the well-being of a young nation. Elihu Burritt. New Britain, Conn., May 4th, 1878. CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. THE INTEGRATION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE— AMERICAN AND BRITISH DOWN- CASTS—THE THREE ALLIED POWERS — AMERICA'S DEBT OF NATIONAL HONOUR— THE JURY OF THE VICINAGE Page 9 CHAPTER II. THE EASTERN QUESTION. POWER AND PERIL OF A NATIONAL ILLUSION— COST AND PERIL OF PRECAU- TION- THE EASTERN QUESTION— RUSSIA'S AMBITION AND ITS COMPARA- TIVE RESULTS Page 60 CHAPTER III. NATIONAL QUESTIONS. FUTURE ELECTION OP PRESIDENTS— THE TWIN DAUGHTERS OP THE HORSE- LEECH ; THEIR GREED AND CRV— THE WARDS OF THE NATION ; THEIR DEBT AND DUE— THE GOVERNMENT'S DEBT TO LAND AND LABOUR — WANT OF PUBLIC SPECIALTY MEN Page 83 CHAPTER IV. ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. UTILIZING WASTE MATERIAL- UTILIZING WASTE POPULATION— OUR NEED OF THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE — NECESSITY OF REPEOPLINO NEW ENGLAND — THE FETTERED LABOURER THE FALSE LIGHTS OF GREAT NAMES— THE CONTAGIOUS DEMORALIZATION OV SHODDY unvwy , Pag^ 112 • • • Vlll - CONTENTS. , ' • • ■ '' ' CHAPTER V, * , FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. OLD BUBCHELL'S POCKET—A TALK ON THE ALPHABETS— THE FORMATION OF WORDH — WHERE LANGUAGES WERE MADE AND PERFECTED- WORDY LAN- GUAGES—WHAT AUXILIARY VERBS DO FOR I EARNERS— HEAD-SPRINGS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE Pa^e 148 CHAPTER VI. EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. ELEMENTS AND GROWTH OF TALENT— HISTORY AND MISSION OP ARCHITEC- TURE— THE SECTARIAN QUESTION Page 192 ■■■•.''•..."•.-,■'"'. ' ' '♦ • . , ' .-, CHAPTER VII. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. god's POLYGLOT BIBLES — GOD'S TENEMENT HOUSES — PULPIT BARS AND CHAINS— CHURCH BARS AND BOLTS— LAY WORKERS AND THEIR TRAIN- ING-FUNERAL BARS OF SYMPATHY -THE RULING FASHION IN DEATH— THE LORD'S PRAYER— AMOROUS SENTIMENTALITY OF MO «:RN HYMNS- HEROINES OF ENGLISH PHILANTHROPY — THE ZONE 0* HE WISHING DAY Page 210 CHAPTER VIII. LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN ON THE LAW OF KINDNESS. THE LAW OF LOVE— THE POWER OF LOVE -LOVE FOR HATE- A KIND VOICE —WEALTH IN FRIENDS— BIRD FRIENDS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM— A dog's love FOR A CHILD— THE DUTCH BOOH AND HIS HORSE— A POOR dame's way to pay FOR KIND ACTS— THE RAILW.^ ' BRIDGE-MAN— THK BRAVE MAN AT THE WHEEL -THE BRAVE GIRL AT THE OAR— THE OLD DAME AND HER COAL OF FIRE— THE FRIENDS AND THEIR FAITH— THE MEN OF PEACE AND THEIR STREN^>TH— ONE MAY HAVE IF NOT GIVE LIFE— KIND WORK IN SMALL THINGS- HOW SMALL ACTS TELL ON LIFE —THOUGHTS FOR HOME LIFE Page 259 I CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. CHAPTER I. INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. THE INTEGRATION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE. FROM AN AMERICAN STANDPOINT. THE INTEOBATION OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE — AMERICAN AND BRITISH DOWN- EASTS — THE THREE ALLIED POWERS — AMERICA'S DEBT OF NATIONAL HONOUR— THE JURY OF THE VICINAGE. ^HE homogeneity of the English-speaking race de- }~Jy). clares itself more manifestly in its political instincts than in any other ethnical quality. In going forth to all the habitable latitudes and longitudes of the earth, it illustrates as well as proves this characteiistic. However small the germ of a community it plants on continent or island, in temperate or torrid zone, whether it be a score or a hundred men and women, it tak6s the form of a self- governing commonwealth, just as naturally as if sponta- neously following a political instinct rather than a rea- soned plan of civil life. When a score of such little town- commonwealths have been planted within a circuit of one hundred miles' radius, the same instinct or law draws them into a representative union, called a colony, province, or teiTitory, with a federal government in which each has its share and interest. In the lifetime of a generation half-a-dozen or more of such colonies or provinces are CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. formed in tlie same section of a continent, numbering in the aggregate several millions of inhabitants. The same instinct, motive, and necessity that led them to the organ- ization of the first village government now operate with equal force to bring these separate and well-compacted commonwealths into a constitutional Confederation, called the United States in one part of America in 1783, and the Canadian Dominion on the other half of the continent a century later. This centripetal attraction grows with the growth and strengthens with the strength of all the mu- nicipal, colonial, and other confederate communities of the English-speaking race all round the globe. They all gra- vitate into larger combinations and to fewer centres of national being. This law, or force, shows itself as strong and as active in the British as in the American branch of the family. If all the British Colonies had been planted on the same continent with the mother-country, however wide its expanse and varied its climates, they would long ago have been integrated with the British Empire, and had each its proportionate representation in the Imperial Parliament. Then what stands in the way to prevent this political instinct, or law, from having its free and natural course and consummation ? What prevents the political integration of the Britisii Empire, and the direct representation of all its colonies, provinces, and de})endencies in the Imperial Parliament at London ? The instinct, the interest, the common motive and advantatre are not wanting. Then what opposes, when all these favour and demand the union ? This is a question which it is natural for a thoughtful American to ask, but which he is unable to answer. It is a cause of honest wonderment to him that, in the light of the last century's experience, no British statesman answers this question — that the British press and public do not discuss it. This is a period of very significant and in- structive centennials, indicating points of great departure INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 11 in the past and i'or the futnie. No better time could be chosen for British statesmen and leaders of public opinion in England to consider this very question. And they might reasonably begin at this starting-point of reflection: If each of the thirteen American Colonies, one hundred years ago,hadbeen allowed even two representatives in the Imperial Parliament, what would have become of, or whence would have arisen, the ground-cause of the American Revolution, or " Taxation without Representation ? " Did it pay the English Government and people to shut the door of parliament against the representation of as intel- ligent, virtuous, and loyal Englishmen in America as any that then peopled the home islands of the Empire ? Has the same policy of exclusion, in regard to any colony or province under the British Crown, paid the Home Gov- ernment and people in any decade since 1776, in any form of compensation, in the sense of security, economy, or dig- nity ? If not, then in the light of the past, in the bright- er day of this present, and in the opening dawn of the great future before us, why should they longer be willing to repress and thwart the great political instinct of our common race, to arrest this centripetal law of their politic- al being, and exclude these scores of loyal millions from the full and equal title and right of citizenship and own- ership in a great and integral Empire ? There was a time in the far past when the proudest words a man could utter, on the Danube, the Volga, the Nile, or the Euphra- tes, were ''Romanus civis sum." Paul, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, was glad and proud to say those words of power in the teeth of his Jewish persecutors. Britain's India alone outnumbers in population all the races that yielded obedience to the sceptre of the Ciesars. Why should not any man of those hundreds of millions of subjects of the British Crown be allowed to say, as proudly as Paul spoke those great words before the Roman governor, "Britannicus civis sum" and to say it to as full compass of its meaning and prerogative as any Englishman could express and 12 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. claim in the boast for himself under the shadow of St. Stephen's ? To the mind of an American, well read as to the char- acter and history of his race before and since it branched off into two pai-allel nationalities a century ago, every motive, interest, and generous ambition, that should act not only on Great Britain, but on the race it begat, would seem to press for such an Integration of the Empire. Without giving one motive undue rank over another, let us begin with the patriotic sentiment, which is to the po- litical forces of a nation what charity is to the sisterhood of Christian virtues in an individual. Certainly no nation can be great, in its own force or sense of being, at home or abroad, without patriotism, or a love of country that endures to the end, whatevei- that end may be, or what- ever may come this side of it. This noble, inspiring senti- ment, like charity, ^as covered, almost ennobled, a multi- tude of sins in the lives of nations. When we feel the pulse of a nation, and find this sentiment beating faint and slow in its veins, we know it is affected with the heart-disease, and has but little temps ou raison d'etre. But when the sentiment pervades all classes like a com- mon inspiration ; when even the toiling masses, though bending complainingly under heavy burdens and wrong- ful inequalities, can say, with as much pride as a peer of the realm, " England, with all thy faults, I love thee still — aye, better than any other land the sun shines upon ; " when they can sing with the enthusiam of the French peasants, of " La Belle France," or " C'est doux de mourir pour la patrie;" when they can feel their souls lifted and thrilled by the songs of the German Fatherland, or by the " Star-spangled Banner " of the American people ; when we see what this great sentiment is and does for a nation, every possible motive and interest would seem to induce statesmen and governments to cultivate and ex- tend it toevery section and every subject or citizen within their domains. If patriotism, even at its lower valuation, INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 13 is an active, evei'-available political force, on which a goveinment may count in any emergency, then why .strengthen it- in one subject and weaken it in another ? Why kindle it to a constant heat and glow in the loyal Englishman at home, and starve it down to a taper's light and warmth in an Englishman equally loyal in Canada, Australia, or India ? The purest, noblest pa- triotism i) must live, must grow, by what it feeds upon. If it is the love of country, it must have a country to love — a country <to whose history, character, and c6nstitution it can cling with all the tendrils of its affection, faith, and hope — of which the subject, thus clinging to it, shall be, if not an equal, at least an infinitesimal constituent of its political being ; in which he shall have a political birth- right and portion, as well as the mere right to say, " I was born there." Now, others beside intelligent Englishmen, when tra- velling in British North America, in Australia, India, or in the Cape Colony, must and do observe with admiration the loyalty of those distant subjects of the British Crown. Even the great-grand-children of the first settlers called England " //o?ne," just as if that were the surname of the country in which their ancestors were born. They will talk about such and such persons going "home," about the latest " home " news. Indeed, the term is in their mouths so often that an American, French, or German traveller may be at a loss in regard to what they mean by it, until he learns by repetition that " home " is the generic name for old England. What more can one be able or ex- pected to say of a country than to call it " Home," the near- est and dearest name after " Heaven ? " Why should not such a sentiment have the same to feed upon in those distant parts of the Empire as in England itself ? Why should it not be allowed to cling to the motherland by a political tendril, as well as by the fibres of a connnon filial afifection ? It is said, and proved by much experi- ence, that a republic cannot be established without repub- 14 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. licans, nor a monarchy without loyalists ; that even law cannot live and move without a public sentiment to sus- tain it. But can there be room for a question in any ob- servant mind, that the requisite sentiment is ripe and ready, in every country under Queen Victoria's sceptre, for the safe, peaceful, and well-compacted Integration of the British Empire ? Well, this condition precedent exists; the sentiment is sufficiently strong and evident. The great vital force necessary for 'the compacting of such an Empire is ready and waiting for its construction. ' Where there is a will there is a way,' says the old proverb, saying it sometimes as an accomplished fact, and sometimes as an unrealized possibility. Why not make a way for this will to become part -and-parcel of one mighty Imperial whole ? To foster, educate, and expand this sentiment of patriotism among all the continental and island populations under the Bri- tish Crown to its fullest, warmest life of loyalty, would be in itself sufficient motive for the integration. But this is only one of the many happy results that would flow from it. The representation of all these colonial popula- tions in the Imperial Parliament would do something more for them than to attach them to the British Crown and Government by a stronger sentiment of loyalty, or by the faith and feeling that they had the same part and in- terest in the Empire as the home counties of England. It would stimulate the growth of cognate sentiments and conditions of equal force and value. The whole outside world knows and appreciates what Great Britain has done to protect, encourage, and help her colonies to develop their resources and to promote their material wellbeing ; what an outfit she has given them in railroads, canals, ir- rigation, telegraphs, and other agencies helpful to their material prosperity. We know what she has done for them in giving them institutions, political, educational, and religious, forms of representative government similar to her own, even to such small and distant dependencies INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 15 as Cape Breton, Vancouver's Island, and Natal. Perhaps some home Englishman may ask : " What more can we do for these colonies than we have done or are doing ? What does a colonist lack that I possess ? Look at their legis- latures, their universal or easy suffrage, their churches, schools, cheap lands, and small taxes. Who pays for their defence, for the scores of costly warships and scores of regiments for their protection against foreign and domes- tic enemies ? What social, industrial, or political advan- tage or possibility do I claim or enjoy here, in my coun- ty of Devonshire, that a loyal Englishman in Cape Bre- ton or Natal does not possess ? " Let us look at the premises assumed in these questions. We will grant them. We will admit that the British subject in Cape Breton or in Prince Edward's Island, with its cheap lands and small taxes, can make for himself as good a material position as his fellow-subject in Devon- shire with the same industry. He can make himself, soci- ally and politically, a better local position, if he has the requisite talent and worth of character. It is much easier for a man to work his way to the first rank of his island society, than for the Devonshire man to reach the second rank of English society. He may rise to the first place in the Colonial Legislature or Council, while the other, with all his talent, wealth, and influence, may not get high- er than the wardenship in a village church. The Cape Bretonian, with the learning to be acquired in his island schools, may rise to a height of intellectual power and elo- quence which would befit the English bar or bench at Westminster, or the pulpit of St. Paul's. — "Very good and true," says the Devonshire Englishman ; " then wherein is not his position equal and even preferable to mine, both in actual experience and prospective pcstibility ?" We will tell you wherein the condition is disproportionately in your favour. The Cape Bretonian by dint of long and earnest study, has become a man of broad and deep learn- ing and of commanding eloquence. " It may be so, but I 16 ■ CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. have never heard of him," you say. True, that is just the matter witli him, and you too. And you will never hear of him, though he should rival Sir John Coleridge &t the har, or the Bishop of Peterborougli in the pulpit. He has all the elements of an illustrious statesman in him, and all the stimulus for their development that the lieutenant- governorship of a small and sparsely -peopled province, whose history and geography are but dimly known to you, can supply. He has in him the latent talent and genius for a great writer, and as much scope, verge, and impulse for a literary reputation as an eagle for lofty flight in a hen-coop. This is one of the differences be- tween you and him. You have risen to the wardenship in your village church, and he to a lieutenant-governor- ship in that distant colony. He has risen to the first so- cial position in that province — you to the middle rank of the middle class in England. But let us apply a political standard to the measurement of your position. What is his against the possibility of yours ? You can vote for the Premier of the Imperial Parliament, the generating heart and head-spring of all the colonial legislatures un- der the sceptre of the Empire. Nay, more — there is no legal or political bar between you and the Premiership it- self. That great position is one of the possibilities that rise before you to stimulate your ambition. But do you prefer a literary reputation ? What a home constituency to inspire your hope and appreciate and reward your genius ! We see and admire what brilliant literature small nations, like Denmark and Sweden, have given to the world ; but what have colonies ever done in this field of intellectual effort and production ? No, sir ; it is all very well for you to talk of the position and possibilities of your fellow-subject in Cape Breton or Natal, but you feel the difference between you and him from the sole of your foot to the crown of your head. Test his sentiment and yours in your own mind. How do you feel towards him politically ? Though he speaks your language, was bom INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 17 in your country, and calls England " Ho7ne," do you not regard him a,s an outsidfr, and he you as an inmderl What is his feeling towards all the .other Colonies of the Empire ? What is his political relation to them, interest in them, and influence over them, compared with yours, as a constituent of Gladstone or Disraeli, as a home Eng- lishman whose single vote, in a close contest, may elect either of those statesmen ? The Integration of the Empire, by even a very smallrepre- sentation of each Colony in the Central Parliament would make every man under the British Crown a head taller in political possibility, and conscious dignity of his rela- tion, not only to a consolidated Empire the ^un never would set upon, but also to the rest of the world. A seat in the Senate of such an Empire would be such a stimulus to a noble ambition as no colonist ever felt be- fore. And the colonial constituency or legislature that elected him to that great position would feel that they elevated themselves in elevating him to fill it. The great prizes and possibilities of a world-girdling Empire would be thrown open to all its millions of loyal subjects, from the Premiership down through all its political, military, naval, ecclesiastical, and literary positions. Its illustri- ous honours and emoluments, patriotic duties and aspira- tions would all be put into one commonwealth of motive and reward, yielding all its prizes to those who should win them in the ennobling competition of true merit and talent. Who could estimate,to the full value of its direct and collateral results, the working of such a competition in every colony that now hugs the centre of its political being as the whole world of its hope, interest, and inspir- ation ? But a greater result than any we have noticed would flow from the Integration of the Empire. Nothing so dwarfs a man, and so impoverishes his heart and thoughts, as to shut him up in his own little self, in which there is only room for him to say " / " and " My." The ettect is 18 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. the same on a small isolated colony or community with a government of its own. Its " We " and " Our^' are no mere generous towards other Colonics, widely separated from it by sea or land, than the "7 " and "My" of an isolated in- dividual. Now this leanness of sentiment is the worst result of a ' ong period of isolated independence in a small colony or state. It intensifies their small-minded love of self, and excludes from their thoughts all that does not make for the interests of self, llieir little political en- tity satisfies their ambition. They are loth to unite it to a larger combination, lest some features of its local sover- eignty should be lost. This characteristic of small poli- tical communities has been strikingly illustrated in both branches of our English-speaking family. Indeed, it has been proved as a fact of actual experience, what might be deduced from such a condition of things, that the smaller the independent community the more reluctant it is to relinquish its sovereign self, and become a joint constitu- ent of a great and powerful union. After the war of the American Revolution, in which all the Colonies fought side by side for seven years, when they came to unite in one great Federal Union, the smallest of them stood out against it the longest, unwilling to yield one iota of its local sovereignty for any good or glory it might derive as part of .a great nation. So it has been in the recent Con- federation of the British Provinces in America : the smal- lest stood out against it the longest, under the influence of the same sentiment. Each had lived, moved, and had its being so long in a little self that its own "/ " seemed greater to it than any " We " that it could form with other Colonies. Now, there is nothing that so tends to enlarge the heart, life, and thought of a community as to feel that it is the constituent of a great whole ; that " We " is the grandest word a human tongue can utter, when the heart expresses by it its interest in the populations of a conti- nent, its fellow-feeling with the commonwealths of an INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 10 Eni])irG. See how it has ah-eatly worked in the Confeder- ation of the British Pi'ovinces in America. What fellow- feeling, what common bond of interest, was there between Prince Edward's Island and Vancouver's Island ten years ago ? Had they belonged to different and alien races, they coidd hardly have been farther apart in mutual thought, interest, and sympathy. But now they meet at Ottawa. Now they feel that they belong to one great and growing whole. Now they say " We'' and "Our" with each other, in all the faiths, hopes, progressive capacities, and destiny of a commonwealth spanning the continent. Why, this very sentiment alone pays well for all the effort the Confederation has cost, if it should produce no other re- sult. If this sentiment works so well between Prince Edward's Island and Vancouver's Island, why not give it full play between the North American Dominion and Australia and India, by letting them meet and say " We " in the Imperial Parliament at London, and say it in the full scope and inspiration of the feeling that they belong to a mighty commonwealth, that spans the globe and em- braces whole continents and half the islands of the sea ; that in all the realised wealth of the gi-eatness and glory of its past, in all the hopes and- grand possibilities of its future, they have their co-equal share ; that what that great Empire is yet to be and do for the world shall de- pend upon their loyalty, as well as upon the virtue and patriotism of the Home Islands ? Why not allow Cana- dian, Australian, East Indian, and Caperaan to say "Bri- tannicwi civis sum " to the full prerogative and compass of meaning which such integration should give to it ? There is another moral effect which would be realised from this integration. The fellow-feeling and patriotism which would pervade and inspire all the varied popula- tions of the Empire would impart to the Imperial Legis- lature a healthy element of action. This aspect of the sub- ject may be neglected by many who may rdmit its other features as worthy of consideration. For, in the consti- 20 CHIPS PROM MANV HLOCKS. tution of all reprosontativo ^ovorninonts, a country was <llvi(i»Ml up into .sevoral hundred littK; W/s-, (!ach called a borougli or electoral district. In the American Union, the man who represented one of these districts was re- quired to be a citizen residing in it, under the admitted or apparent assumption tliat no outsider could fully re- present, defend, and prc-mote its interests. When we come to analyse this assumption, we find it resting on the narrow ground of self — and a small self at best. It seems to imply that the will and interest of a town or district stand, in its estimation, first and foremost among the objects of national legislation ; that its representative is expected and chosen to look to these first, and second- arily to others more remote. This assumption can hardly mean anything less than the claim that each electoral dis- trict may be, and ought to be, the subject of special legis- lation ; that something should be done or left undone for it, in distinction from the general and even weal of all other parts of the country : in other words, that its own little self shall stand out and be held up in all the dignity of " the great / and the little u." This is still the law of Congressional Representation in the United States, and its spirit and object show its origin, or prove that self — first in the individual, then in the town, next in the dis- trict — asserted a claim upon the General Government which could not be understood, represented, and defended by any man in the next town or district, however wise, virtuous, and eloquent. And for nearly a century no congressional district in the United States has been re- presented by a non-resident. But Great Britain has built her representative system on a broader basis of political faith and motive in its hun- dreds of constituencies. Each has learned to say " We " first and " / " afterwards, and their " We " means and em- braces the whole nation and its interests. They do not imply by their choice that their town or district has any claim to special, or any part in the general legislation of INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 21 the country which an ahlu and tiu.sty man at the other side of tlic kingdom may not faitlifully represent and de- fend in Parliament. Thus, for the last hundred years it would probably be found that two-thirds of the constitu- encies of the kingdom have chosen outside men, wherever they could find those who best commanded their confi- dence. They never demanded permanent residence as a ([ualification, or even recommendation, for their choice. They had the three realms for a field of selection, and felt it a duty and an honour to send the best man they could find to Parliament. And when did a constituency ever lose in its special or local interests by such a choice ? If Lord Palmerston had been a native as well as rendent of Tiverton, would he have been expected to do more than he did for that town ? Did John Bright do less for Durham, or Sharman Crawford, of Belfast, less for Rochdale, than each would have done if a native of the town he repre- sented ? Here, then, is a broad and generous basis of representa- tion in Great Britain already prepared and available for the Integration of the Empire. The home constituencies have learned to entrust their mind, will, and interest in Imperial legislation to outside men — some of them to Australian Lowe or Childers, or to Nova Scotian Halibur- ton ? Have they lost anything by this confidence ? But when we come to consider the influence of di- rect colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament, one very important fact will supply the proof, that only the great and general interests of the Empire would be- come subjects of this united legislation. For it must be remembered that each of these colonies has a legislature of its own, with sufficient power to look after its own special and local interests, and would have no more occa- sion to bring these specialities into Parliament than one of the States of the American Union has to bring its mat- ters of local interest into Congi'ess. Then each colony, having such a local legislature for its special interests, 22 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. would stand related to the Imperial Government and Par- liament only by the senatorial connection that exists be- tween each American State and the Federal Government and Congress at Washington. Of course a popular repre- sentation in the Imperial Parliament for all these colonies is entirely out of the question. It would be all that each could claim, or need, to be represented by two senators. That is all that the State of New York, with a population of 4,000,000, has in the U. S. Senate ; and Delaware, with less than 100,000, has the same number. Thus 100 repre- sentatives would be all that would be necessary or desir- able to be brought into Parliament from all these scattered domains of the Empire. Leaving behind all the special interests entrusted to their local legislatures. Parliament would be a normal school to them in which to learn to be statesmen of such large and generous perceptions as to take into their daily thought the common weal of one-third of the population of the globe, embracing races of a hundred different tongues. Here representatives from all the great islands of the ocean and from all the earth's con- tinents would meet together at St. Stephens for half the weeks of the year, to study and promote the interests of three hundred millions, who would make up the mighty whole. What scene has the world yet witnessed to com- pare with such a spectacle ! To the political world it would surpass what the CEcumenical Council of five hun- dred Bishops was to the ecclesiastical as a representative body. What it was natural for each Bishop of this great Council to feel in regard to the spiritual empire of the Roman Catholic faith, every colonial senator in the British Parliament would feel, in deeper and broader sentiment, in regard to the Empire he represented in part, though that part were only Manitoba or Natal. If either of the two, or smaller still, he would feel it to be a living mem- ber of the same great political body, beating with the same pulse of political life, and a sharer in all the destiny of greatness and glory which such a ife and such a union could win. INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 23 There is a question which has undoubtedly suggested itself to many public men in England, in connection with any scheme for giving the Colonies a direct representation in the Imperial Parliament. It is a question that comes up in this form : " What would these representatives from all the ends of the earth know or care about our home matters of interest ? j^ re we to submit these interests to the judgment and decision of such — foreigners, we must call them at first, some of them ex-princes from India, who can hardly speak our language, and who have not yet adopted our religion ? " Perhaps this wide question em- braces all or the most serious difficulties that present themselves to Englishmen of highly intelligent and thoughtful minds. Let us, then, consider their weight and vincibility. I First, then, the representatives of England proper would outnumber all the Irish, Scottish, and Colonial members. This fact may be cited only to meet the brute-force possi- bility of a coalition majority against the special interests of England, if such a strange possibility must bo admitted. But what conceivable motive could induce the representa- tives of Newfoundland and New Zealand to enter into a i coalition with East Indian or Irish members against the ; home interests of England ? If they had the animus and '. ability for such coalition strategy, what earthly object i could they gain by it ? If they are to impart truthful I information in regard to the condition, wants, and wishes ; of the Colonies they represent, as the basis of Imperial i legislation in their behalf, could they be enticed into the , fantastic hallucination that a readiness and habit of run- j ning into coalitions would promote their ends ? I But what special institutions or interests has England now, or would have at the integration, that could be aftect- ; ed by this Colonial representation ? She is now elaborat- ing a system for the education of all the children of the realm, even bringing up from the gutters and lairs of poverty and sin the moat reprobate street arabs and gam- 24 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. ins of her large cities. Well, is it conceivable that the representatives of Colonies like those of North America and Australia, that have made common-school education almost as free and cheap as air, would throw a straw in the way of this home effort to educate all the children of the people ? Let bygones be bygones, but one memory may be revived in this connection. If every Colony calls England " Home" every State and every well-read citizen of the American Union calls her " the mother-country " ; and if he and every loyal colonist ever had cause to blush for their common mother, it was for the reason that she left so many of her home children in the outer darkness of ignorance. Who outside the home islands would be happier and prouder for her success in bringing up those children to the highest level of popular education than the Canadian, Australian, or the American citizen ? Well, what other institution, interest, or proposed im- provement, special or advantageous to England, Scotland, or Ireland, could be put at hazard, or in any way obstructed, by this Colonial representation ? The electoral basis has been reduced almost to universal sufferage in the three king- doms, and is likely some day even to reach that level. Very good. Then would representatives of Colonies that have already adopted this basis be likely to obstruct it in England ? Then there is the British Constitution, which is a little world of history and historical precedent in it- self, instead of a written compact, like the Constitution of the United States. Would that be exposed, by colo- nial representation, to any change which the English peo- ple themselves should not propose and initiate ? Would the great estates of the realm lose their relative place or Influence ? Would any of the prerogatives left by pre- scription and precedent to the Crown be annulled or weakened ? Would either House of Parliament be abol- ished, or curtailed in function, dignity, or power ? Would there be any motive or tendency to diminish the rank anti value o^ the great prizes and places now existing in the INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 25 United Kingdom, and which would be thrown open to competition to all wlio had the ambition to strive for them and the ability to win them, anywhere in the vast Empire after its political integration ? What possible good could accrue to any Colony from any change in the British Con- stitution, or in the estates of the United Kingdom, which the English people themselves should not desire and origi- nate ? Next let us come to the complicated and agitating ques- tion of Church and State. Let us suppose this question should not be settled in England at the time of this Im- perial Integration. It may be injudicious e,nd improper in an American to express an opinion in regard to the subject ; but perhaps he ma\'^ take it for granted that the strongest friend of the Established Church believes that the time is coming when it must stand by, or fall from, its connection with the State, by the infallible test of the Divine Founder of the Christian faith — by its fruits, not by its leaves ; not by pretentions or professions it has not realized in its Christian work, life and power for the spiritual well-being of the nation. When that time comes if the Church shall be found to have failed both in fact and faculty of fruitage, most likely the English people alone, and even the best friends of the Church, will desire and effect its release from the State, in the belief that the severance will increase its vitality and vigour. But In- tegration would not and could not pi-ecipitate this event. For when the Empire shall be thus unified, the State Church must be a local institution, special to England alone, over which colonial representation would have no control nor influence, nor any interest or motive to exer- cise either, even if it had the ability. But if t!iey had a desire to meddle with the question, the English members would have the numerical power to retain the connection as long as they thought it best for the well-being of either Church or State. StiU, Disestablishment would tend to give the Episcopal Church a power for expansion it never B 20 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. had ill its own independent spiritual right. It would be put on the same footing- as the Episcopal Church in the United States, where, from Maine to Georgia, and from Texas to the Canadian border, it is one and the same as an ecclesiastical organization, electing its own bishops without leave or license of any civil government. No finger of the State touches its prerogative as an independent religious body. No Crown, Parliament, or no President or Congress meddles with its choice, or touches, with a word or warning look, its faith, wor- ship, or doctrine. Even if there were cause on the part of the English State Church to fear that Integra- tion would hasten Disestablishment, it would find a full compensation for the severance in the new field for its life and power which a consolidated Empire would open up before it. Let it cast its eyes on the position of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States. In no part of the wide world does that Church grow so rapidly, and meet so few restrictions to its free will and expansion, as in the American Union. In no country is it more loyal and devoted to the Pope's spiritual authority. Yet he cannot throw around it a figment of civil powei', nor does it receive, ask, or need an iota of such power from the American Government. Still, all its bishops and archbishops, and its cardinal, are appointed by the Pope, and always in conformity with the wish and interests of the American Catholics. If, then, the Roman Catholic Church is the freest, strongest, and most prosperous and loyal, where it has not a little finger's force of civil au- thority or state patronage, why should the English Church fear to put itself on the same footing, if Integi-ation should actually hasten that consummation ? We will only consider one ijiore of the questions in- volved in the proposition we are discussing : that is, the commercial relation and interest. Let us look at this question from a common- sense point of view. We have dwelt upon the intellectual, sentimental, and political INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 27 impulses and advantages which wonld be gained by two liundred and fifty millions of British colonial subjects by being put on the same political footing as their fellow- subjects in England. Probably no thoughtful home Englishman would doubt that these colonial populations would be gi-eatly benefited in these respects by this political equalisation. But he may ask, " After all, what should we English people at home gain by it ? " This may be answered by another question : " What do you gain now fi'om the North American Colonies or Australia, which you would not if they were independent nations ? What do they contribute directly to the support of the Imperial Government ? Do you try on your Income Tax, or any other tax, upon them ? The whole world knows what you have spent on them in the last fifty yeara : have you got any of it back in this period through any form of taxation? " " But they buy our manufactures," you say. Very true, but would they not buy as many if they were independent States ? Do they not act towards you as if they were ? Do they not impose a duty on the manufactures you send them, just as if they came from a foreign country ? How is it about the old discriminat- ing duty question ? You must remember that, unless you have forgotten Cobden. Did not the English home peo- ple pay, in fifty years, £100,000,000 more for their colon- ial sugars than the same quantity and quality would have cost them if bought in other markets. Have you forgot- ten the old colonial timber-duty ; how home Englishmen, when they were obliged to have Baltic timber for certain purposes, had first to ship it from Norway or Sweden to Canada or Nova-Scotia, unload it into colonial shi[)s, and hire them to bring it to Liverpool, all for colonial vro- tectian? Let us glance at the present commercial relations be- tween the mother-country and her Colonies, and appreci- ate their anomalies. To do this adequately, let us put them side by side with the commercial relations between CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. the American Union and its Tonitorios. These are political communities, in training to be admitted into the Republic as full-organised States, when they have acquired the re- quisite population. Each of them, like a British colony, has a legislature of its own. The Governor of each is also appointed by the Central or Home Government. It has the same right of petition as a British colony, and other faculties of influence to use at Washington in behalf of its interests. Congress engages to defend it against the Indians and other enemies, just as England does in regard to each of her Colonies. Now, then, suppose such an anomalous commercial relation should be suggested between the American Government and one of its Territor- ies as that now existing between England and Canada or Australia. Can an intelligent Englishman believe such a relation could be tolerated six months, without stirring the people of all the old States to indignant emotion ? Suppose that Washington territory, Arizona, or New Mexico should take it into its head to establish a set of custom-houses around its borders, and levy a duty on all productions imported, into it from the States, in order to raise money for making roads, building bridges, and for educational and other purposes. But does not Canada do also to each of the other Colonies what she does to the mother-country ? Does she not impose duties on the colonial produce of the West Indies, just as if it were im- ported from the most favoured foreign country ? This, then, is the unnatural, anomalous commercial re- lation existing not only between the home-country and its colonies, but between one colony and another in sev- eral cases. Compress the principle within an area like France, or even the American Union, and we have the old French octroi system in full operation, putting colon- ies for cities, and giving each power to tax all articles brought into it from the others. Now the Integration of the Empire would change all this. It would bring all the Colonies under the British Crown into just that commer- INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 29 cial relation to it and to each other which now exists be- tween all the States of the American Republic, and be- tween them and the Federal Gevernment. It would abolish the octroi system from one end of the Empire to the other. All the custom-houses from Canada to New Zealand, and from Vancouver's Island to Heligoland, would be Imperial, however the revenues they collected might be distributed. These, then, are several of the more important consid- erations which v/ould occur to a thoughtful American mind in favour of unifying the British Empire, after the representative system of the American Union. With all his loyalty to his own country, with all his faith in its great destiny, he knows this glorious future he expects for his nation must be inseparably associated with the future of the mother-country ; that they must and will go over the sea of remaining time, yard-arm to yard- arm, bearing aloft to all other nations and peoples the same flag of civil and religious freedom, vitality, and civilising power. He would say to her at this momen- tous juncture, what Nelson said at Trafalgar : " Anchor ! England, anchor!" Now is the time to anchor these drifting ships of her fleet, that, brought into a new line of battle for universal humanity, they may sail forth abreast to conquests they never won. THE AMERICAN AND BRITISH "DOWN-EASTS." For fifty years and more the Lower British Provinces had been the most unknown and untravelled section of the continent to the great majority of the American people. Indeed, we had more to do, say, think, and hear in regard to Mexico than to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Those provinces had even been left out in the cold on our 30 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. maps, or attached to them as a kind of appendix, ai=i if not to entirely ignore or overlook their geographical posi- tion and existence. The best-read and best-travelled Americans could tell but little of the location, form, size, and capacities of the country, or of the history and char- acter of the people. The thousands who visit Europe have stopped for one hour at Halifax, and seen the worst or harbour side of that town, and perhaps have thought it pretty much the whole, or, at least, the best, of Nova Scotia. Cod, mackerel, and herring fishers have cast their hooks into every square league of the provincial waters, but the lands they surround or bound had been left hidden in their native fogs or in the deeper mists of imagination. Up to within a year or two we had no points of connec- tion or access for visiting the country. A vast distance of actual or imaginary wilderness intervened between our Down-East and the Down-East of these Lower Bi-itish Provinces. All land-travel between them was barred except by rough staging over tedious rough roads. But a well ap- pointed railway has changed all this, and brought into our near neighbourhood one of the most interesting coun- tries in North America, which, doubtless, will hereafter become an attractive tourist and recreation section for thousands of American travellers. And not one of them could have availed himself of this new facility for visit- ing the country with more pleasure than myself. I had travelled much in the two Canadas, and visited nearly every considerable town and village in the upper Pro- vince, and had long wished to see what kind of countries Nova Scotia and New Brunswick were, and what kind of people resided in them. When I set out on this journey about the middle of De- cember, I had heard that there was a railroad in operation between Bangor and St. John in New Brunswick, but was unacquainted with the means of travel in the interior of the provinces. However, I started in the belief that they Y^'ould enable me to visit all the principal towns and points INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 31 of interest. The whole journey was very enjoyable, and, in some respects, more instructive and interesting than if made in summer. I say more instructive to a mind open to the lessons of Nature. And next to the lessons of Holy Writ those which Nature teaches with her illustra- tions I have studied for years with attentive faculties. Perhaps no other living man has been so deeply affected by them as myself Forty years ago a single half-hour's study of physical geography changed the whole course of my life from that time to this. I there read a new gospel in the revelations of Nature, or rather the gospel of the New Testament written in duplicate in the lan- guage of the seasons, soils, climates, and productions of the earth. I have often said that the difference between the island of Great Britain and Labrador, made all the difference in my life and labours for thirty years ; that had it not been for the difference in climate, soil, and pro- duction between these two sections, lying in the same latitude, under the same sun, and washed by the same sea, I should never have gone to Europe, or written or spoken a word on the brotherhood and interdependence of nations. It is for this reason that no one can be more in- terested in the varying productions of different countries, or study the political economy of Nature more atten- tively than myself. This study has brought me to the full conviction and faith of a mathematical fact, that Nature has so provided for a constant commerce not only between sea-divided nations, but between states or provinces of the same country, that there is no section of the earth two hundred miles square that can produce the same articles, in quality or quantity, as the next section of the same size adjoining it on either side. The striking proofs and illustrations of this industrial and commercial economy of Nature are to me a special source of instruction and enjoyment when travelling in any direction. And I do not recollect seeing this econ- omy more beautifully illustrated than on my winter's 32 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. journey through Maine, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. The first feature of it which I noticed with peculiar in- terest, was the industrial ; or that arrangement which Nature provides for equalizing the conditions of sections of the same country, divided by wide spaces of distance, and varied by wide differences of production. These compensations afford a most instructive study. For in- stance, if she gives to one section a vast area of flat, level, soft, alluvial soil, as to one of our Western prairie States, she gives to it no mountain, nor forest, nor bright, healthy streams of water ; and where she withholds these, she cuts off the supply of paying, continuous labour through the winter. The soft, rich soil of the prairie State is easily and quickly tilled ; its harvests, reaped and threshed by machinery, arc early sent to the market ; then comes a long winter of discontent or compulsory idleness to hired labourers, and they flock to large cities like Chicago or San Francisco, where they spend all their earnings through the past short season, and become frequently a charge upon the charity or care of Young Men s Christian Associa- tions. But in Maine and other New England States we see, and ought to recognise with gratitude, what Nature gives them in exchange for fertile, alluvial soil, and for all the advantages for which we are so apt to envy the West. She gives these States good, healthy work for every month in the year. Indeed, the busiest industries of the year in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire are carried on in the winter. The observant traveller must enjoy a winter journey through these States with a pecu- liar relish of satisfaction. He will see their hill-sides, river-sides, and valleys studded with such farm houses as he will find nowhere else on this continent or on any other. He will see the white abodes of country life all radiant with the quiet competence within ; looking as if their very cheeks were rounded out with the plenty that fills cellar, larder, and garret. He will see what will give jiim eq^ual pleasure. He will see often great, white barns, INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 33 locked arm-in-arm with the house. 'sharing and reflecting its comfort. He will see cattle, sheep, poultry, and swine basking in well-littered and sunny yards, as if, in the languageof the poet, "their lai'ge and lustrouseyes thanked the Lord " for the kind thouglit of them which He had put into their master's heart. He will see how Nature remembered this barn-yard companionship of human life, and provided for it in her gifts to the country. Contrast tlio New England condition of these barn-yard companions with the condition of their kind in Illinois. Nature has given no timber to the prairie State for building barns to house its cattle. If we may say it with reverence, she gave those States their heart's desire and boast in rich soil, but sent leanness into their souls in regard to the dumb animals that serve and enrich them. The harvests which these animals plough for, sow, reap, thresh, and carry to market seldom buy a shelter for them against the cutting breath of a prairie winter. For myself, I can truly say, that I never travelled in any civilized country with such sympathy for farm animals and with such in- dignation at their cruel treatment, as in those fertile States of the West, that boast so much of what they call their natural advantages. To see, as every one may see if he has a heart to look at the spectacle, a herd of cattle standing unsheltered with the mercury at zero and with icicles six inches long hanging from their nose, is a sight tliat takes away the enjoyment of a winter's journey in that section of the country. In Maine and New Brunswick especially one will get a new sense of the mission of snow on the earth. Poets have given us their view of it in the aspects that strike the fancy. The sleigh-bells of a hundred winters have set it to the music of social life. Its sanitary work has been dwelt upon in learned disquisitions. But here in these forest States its irdustrial value and power are brought to the front of all other considerations. Here, snow is the only possible roadway to the mountain, forest, 84 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. and lowland wood. What would all t,ho vast forests of timber be worth without snow ? What would pine lumber cost us per thousand without it ? Snow is the universal railway which Nature lays down every winter for these lumber States, from the foot of every tree in the still backwoods to every sawmill, and every stream and wharf of the country. There it is not only road but it is motive power. The snow of Maine and New Brunswick is equal to half a million of horse-power in the transportation of lumber. That is, it would re- quire half a million more horses than now employed to get this timber from forests to the mills on bare ground, if this were possible. In travelling through these sections one cannot help being impressed with the industrial capacity and value of snow. While there, a warm rain had carried it away, and the very wheels of industiy seemed to stop turning on their axles. The whole com- munity longed, hoped, prayed, and looked for snow as earnestly as the people of other States wish and wait for rain in time of drouth. There is one most valuable result of an international railway, or one running across the boundary between two different countries. The grim custom-house, which so di- vides nations, and so taxes them for being independent of each other, has to let down one or two of its top-bars to the iron horse. He cannot stop to parley with the official banditti of restriction, or with trunk and satchel- seaichers, so they only make a pretence of examination, and pass one's baggage with only the ceremony of a chalk mark. The custom-house authorities on the line between us and the British Provinces are particularly gentle and polite in their small duties. And well may they let us pass into our neighbour's territory with the slightest in- spection; for, with our high tariffs and shoddy money, they know that we cannot take with us anything that the provincials can afford to buy. So there is only one article that occasions them question or suspicion. This is INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 35 fohaccn — the sweetest morsel that the custom-officers of other countries search for in Amencan trunks and carpet- bags, for no other article in the world will bear such a heavy tax. For a hundred miles beyond the Maine boundary line, the country is nearly of the same character as that on this side, minus the thrifty towns and villages. For this whole space had remained a kind of thinly-settled wilder- ness until the opening of the railroad from Bangor to St. John. So we meet with no considerable village until we come to the great sea-port of New Brunswick. No city between New Orleans and Halifax presents such a striking and interesting view from the sea as this pro- vincial town. The scenery at the entrance of the harbour is almost equal to that of Quebec, taking away the great fortress. It is situated on the Bay of Fundy at the mouth of the St. John River. The hills on either sido are nearly as bold and high as at Quebec. On these hills the town rises street by street, with its churches crowning I he sum- mit, and presenting an imposing appearance. Just across the narrow bay, which seemingly is not so wide as the Connecticut at Hartford, another city, like a Brooklyn to New York, called Portland, is arising on another hill of equal height. The St. John River here comes into the bay at right angles, spanned just above the junction by a noble suspension bridge, which adds an interesting feature to the general view which the eye grasps at once from the sea. Whatever advantage the Canadas may possess in other respects, these Lower Provinces surpass them in sea-ports open all the year round. The harbour of St. John can never freeze or close in winter. It has in itself an ice-breaker which all the frosts of the North Pole could not resist, — a tide that rises and falls more than twenty feet every day. Few sea-ports in the world are better adapted for shipping at all seasons of the year, and the tonnage owned and sailed by St. John undoubtedly equals that of New York. For many years past it has 36 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. carried on a great trade in ships, by building and loading them with timber, then taking them to England and selling them with their loading at Liverpool. Its trade with the West Indies and South America is one of the richest sources of prosperity to the'whole province. These countries have to import all their lumber not only for houses but for their productions, which must all be sent away in casks or boxes. Millions of these are sent from Maine and New Brunswick in what are called shooks,or the sides, bottoms, ends, and covers of a box, or the staves and heads of a cask, in a compact shook, to be put to- gether when landed. The number of these packages ex- ported to Cuba alone, for sugar and molasses, is simply prodigious. What the gold mines of California and Australia are to those countries, the pine forests of the British Provinces are to them, and more abundant far in enduring produc- tion and value. They are safer, steadier, and more fertile sources of prosperity. A single schooner could bring to New York all the gold ever mined in California. Five thousand men could have gathered it all probably from the diggings. But the mining of lumber in the Canadas and New Bninswick has employed fifty thousand men in the forest diggings of the axe, and hundreds of the largest ships to convey their huge nuggets to the woodless countries of the world. The mills, ships, and men em- ployed in this great, bulky business create a vast amount of collateral enterprise in the building up of towns, and in setting the wheels of other industries in motion. One or two facts will illustrate the extent of this trade. I overheard a man state in conversation that he could turn out 100,000 feet a vi^eek from his mills on the St. John. During last season, a firm in Montreal sent twenty million feet to the United States, and thirty mil- lion to Buenos Ayres, The Lower Provinces, or New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Qape Breton, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland, INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 37 not only possess all the open Atlantic Sea harbours of the new nation which is to extend from ocean to ocean across the continent, but they produce a vast amount of raw material for exportation. Nova Scotia and Cape Breton are full of the best bituminous coal in the world, and never, since my return from England, have I enjoyed such a luxury of comfort as while sitting by the bright, happy, healthy fires in their open grates. Ho\^ much I coveted the luxury for New England, which ought to enjoy it in all her homes, and would enjoy it were it not locked out of her possession by the iron key of Pennsylvania, which prevents us from using any other coal but her brain blis- tering fuel. During the coal famine which the Pennsyl- vania corporations produced for their own benefit a year or two ago, the doors of the Nova Scotia ports were opened a little, and preparations were made for sending their coal into the States, but the old policy has been restored, and this excellent fuel is excluded from our own use, though it may be laid down at the provincial wharves for $2.50 per ton. In going by land from St. John to Halifax, I passed through the centre of Nova Scotia for the whole length of the peninsula, going around the head of the Bay of Fundy. The distance is over 200 miles, and the govern- ment railway passes through a very beautiful and productive country. No western prairie can be more fertile than the section that borders on this remarkable bay, which narrows to a common river's width for many miles at its upper end. A vast section of this prairie land has to be dyked to keep out the high tide, and it is th' .s brought into a high state of cultivation, especially for the production of the finest quality of English grass. Thou- sand upon thousands of stacks of the best hay studded a great expanse of this rich and level country, and its con- veyance home or to ports for exportation makes a great part of the winter work for farmers. This is the great dairy and stock-raising section, and cattle trains to St. 38 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. John's, Halifax, and other large towns, are frequent and heavily laden. Although little wheat and Indian corn is raised in these lower Provincee, other crops, equally valuable, make agriculture as profitable as in milder cliniates. Oats and potatoes are here grown to their highest perfection, and in vast quantities for export as well as for home consump- tion. The demand for these productions increases with the growth of population, both in the States and in the Provinces, and this demand stimulates and extends agri- culture and all the businesses and interest connected with it, building up market towns and raising the position of the farming community. My journey being in the winter, when the country was covered with snow, of course I could only imagine how it would look in summer when covered with its luxurious vegetation. I was sorry not to be able to visit the section bordering on the eastern shore of the Bay of Fundy, especially that part which Longfellow has immortalized in his Evangeline. His description of Grand Pre, or the Great Prairie, must have been true to the life, and almost equally true in regard to many other parts lying on both sides of the bay. Taking the farm lands, forests, mines, fisheries, and ship-yards into account, few States in our Union afford more continuous, steady, and paying employment than these Provinces. This unbroken continuity of industry is one of the best capacities of progress and prosperity that any country can possess. For hardly any condition can be more demoralizing in its tendency than that in which the labour or business of the year must be accom- plished in six or nine months. The rivers of New Bruns- wick are numerous, running through a picturesque and variegated country, full of every species of scenery that delights the eye. They not only serve as thoroughfares and through-carriers for the great lumber and timber traffic, but they offer the best fishing gi-ound in America. They INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 39 are richer in salmon than even the rivers of Scotland, and are attracting American tourists and sportsmen to their ]»anks in greater numbers from year to year. It is doubtful if any river this side of the Rocky Mountains would afford more picturesque and enjoyable scenery than the St. John, whose head streams extend almost to the St. Lawrence. I was surprised to find the railroad system so fully developed in the two Provinces. Indeed the New Bruns- wickers claim that they will soon have more mileage of railway in operation per head of then- population than the people of any State in America or in Europe. Two parallel lines are now in process of construction, both to be carried through to the St. Lawrence, and which will connect Quebec with St. John and Halifax, and render those towns the seaports of Lower Canada in winter. These railways are built, owned, and worked by the Dominion (xovernment, and no one can travel on them without being impressed with many of the enjoyable advantages of the system. They are not worked to pro- duce the dividends which railway companies make the alpha and omega of their lines. There is no starveling or stingy economy in their arrangements in order to yield increa*jed profits to shareholders. They are run for the public good and the public comfort. The stations are large, neat, and well kept. The cars are excellent, and the running is arranged on a fixed principle. The Gov- ernment owns most of the land through which these lines are constructed. They buy the rails at a lower rate than our corporations pay for them, because the iron key of Pennsylvania cannot lock their ports or exact the heavy tribute to that State which she imposes upon the whole American Union. I was much interested in a scheme for promoting immi gration adopted in New Brunswick. The Government appreciates the condition of every family of European emigrants on landing. Therefore it not only gives them 40 CHIPS FllOM MANY BLOCKS. a certain amount of wild or uncultivated land as we do, but it clears six acres for each settler, and builds him a log-house, and furnishes him with provisions, seeds. Sic, as an outfit. The small tax or return it retjuires for this outlay, he is to work out on the ])ublic road next to his allotment. Thus, without a day's delay at the sea-port, he may go dii-ect to the home prepared for him, and find it ready for his reception, and six acres of land ready for planting. This is a very generous and politic system, and must tend to bring into the Province a valuable pop- ulation to increase its wealth of land and labour. The present is a very interesting period in the political condition of all the Provinces and communities that are now assuming the coherence and consolidation of a national being. For a hundred years they have lived in a kind of small-minded and selfish isolation, jealous of their little local independence, preferring, like some of our little States after the Revolution, to be a small / rather than a large WE. But now they are entering upon a new condition, full of the stinmlating ambition of a national life. The small personality is merging itself into a nationality that extends from ocean to ocean across the continent. Now Nova Scotia is learning to say we with Vancouver's Island on . \ie Pacific ; to meet in one national parliament at Ottawa, a part of the young empire as far from it as Sweden itself. It is interesting to visit a people in this incipient state of national formation ; to see how the first impulses of patriotism act upon theii' faith, hope, and ambition ; to see how their minds expand to take in a new vista of political being, in which they shall be admitted into the sisterhood of independent nations, and to which no one of them all will give it a prouder and heartier welcome than that Mother Country which will number the new Dominion as the second nationality she has begotten. The population of the Provinces is well calculated to develope its resources by an even and steady industry, INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 41 and to form one of the best communities on this conti- nent. It is composed of the best fundamental elements for the formation of such a community. In the tirst place New Brunswick is the child of Massachusetts, and not her prodigal son or daughter. It was natural and inevit- able that a gi-eat number of men of high social position, of education and influence, at the beginning of the Ameri- can Revolution, should have recoiled at the act and intent of severing their connection with the Mother Country, endeared to them by a thousand years of glorious history. One may easily conceive how the thought of such a sever- ance must have affected the minds of such men ; and how ditticult it must have been for them to repress the utter- ance of the painful sentiments which filled their souls. We know, by the experience of our loyal union men in the South during the civil war, what they must have felt and suffered. And we can easily imagine that their condition after the successful termination of the Revolution was pretty much what the condition of the loyalist in the South would have been if the war of secession had resulted in Southern independence. Whether they found this condition insupportable, or their attachment to the Mother Country to increase at the loss of her colonies, hundreds of them left some of the best homes in New England and emigrated to the almost unexplored wilder- ness of New Brunswick, living in log huts, and subject- ing themselves to all the hardships and privations which the Pilgrim Fathers experienced at Plymouth Rock. St. John was their place of refuge and rendezvous. It was then only a kind of trading post for traffic with the In- dians. Here the loyalists erected their little settlement of huts, and slowly, painfully, and hopefully made it a city of habitation, and moulded the whole Province of New Brunswick by the shaping influence of their charac- ter. They were some of the best educated men of Mass- achusetts, representing many of her oldest families, whose names are now familiar to Beacon Street in Boston. One 42 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. of these loyalists owned the grand old mansion wKich Gen. Washington made his headquarters at Cambridge, now the immortalized home of Longfellow. He left it, and all its comforts and luxuries, for a log cabin on the St. John, like many others of similar standing and senti- ment. Indeed, there are but few of the old hereditary families of Boston that are not represented to-day in the first families of St. John and Halifax. Appreciating and even admiring the mistaken sentiment of these self- expatriated men, it was interesting to me to attend service in the first church they built in St. John, to worship with their sons, and join with them in the fellowship of a faith which unites all the English-speaking nations of the earth beyond the severance of revolution, secession, or a-ny of the political convulsions that affect the world. I cannot well close these observations without noticing the commercial relations which Nature has provided between New England and these British Provinces. They virtually lie side by side, with a similar seaboard and a similar inland. New Brunswick and Nova Scotia virtually abut upon Maine. When one looks upon the surface of the two sections, they seem alike, covered with the same timber and growing the same crops. The trees, grain, grasses, and roots are the same. The soil of one produces nothing different from or better than the soil of the other. A superficial observer might say, here are two sections of country which Nature has made entirely independent of each other, because she has given to one just what she has given to the other, in variety, quality, and quantity. Thus she has made no provision for any trade between them. This would be the natural inference of a man who only looked at the surface of the two sections. But let him look again. Let him look into their cellars, and he will see a marvellous difference. He will see the elements of a vast commerce between the two sections. He will find in the cellar of the Provinces countless millions of tons of the best coal in the world, while he INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS, 43 will not find a bushel in the cellar of New England ; coal which would give to New England that gi-eat luxury wliich the people of Old England enjoy in the brightest, healtliiest, happiest fires that ever cheered and blest the homes of any race or age. When New England opens the eyes of her thoughtful mind to see what Nature pro- vided for her in the cellar of her nearest neighbour's country ; what connnercial ties she wove and twisted for them in the very heart-strings of the earth, she will open all her eastern doors to a trade which the iron key of the Keystone State has so long locked out of her reach and enjoyment These commei'cial relations prove anew the theory which has made such a deep impression on my life, that there is no section of the earth two hundred miles square that can live independent of the section of the same size adjoining it on the north, south, east, or west; a fact which constitutes the first syllable in the political economy of Nature. THE THREE ALLIED POWERS. The world has heard and seen much of Allied Powers — of their spirit, motive?, and ends. Their history is pretty well written up, and easily and widely read. Some of these alliances have been very incongruous in their elements and even objects. Most of them, if not all, have been temporary, and those of longest compact have been the most unsuccessful, as may be seen from the experience of " The Holy Alliance." But there are alliances of Great Powers which God has joined together, and which neither man nor any outside coalition may put asunder, which time itself cannot dissolve. It will take much time for the world generally to recognise and accept this fact ; but 44) CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS, the public mind of England should now be up to the level of this truth, and be able to receive it and act upon it in all the future that lies before the nation. Surely this must be clear and manifest to all who watch the signs of the times, and heed their evident meaning: England, Russia and America are the Three Great Powers which, from their birth. Providence has been training for an everlasting alliance in the greatest work that united nations could accomplish or attempt for the world. For a whole century long the liens of this union have been growing in number, and tauter and stronger, and they can no more be loosed by outside human will or force than " the bands of Orion." For several centuries the Star of Empire has held its way westward from the cradle of the race. But the East and West have now met, and the Star of Christian Empire, in making its tour around the world, now faces eastward again ; and who should follow its light, and secure its conquests for mankind ? Who are the East and West, as the great facts and living forces upon which these victories of civiliza- tion depend ? They are England, Russia and America. These are the Three Great Powers which Providence has allied for this mighty mission for humanity. It is not an alliance of their own free and predeterminate choice. The choice .vas not left for their option. A mind more enlightened than theirs made it for them, and irrepealable. Seeing this revealed by the clearest facts, how can they, why should they, be " disobedient to the heavenly vision ? W as there any alternative ? Were there any other Powers in the world which, by geographical position, by history, inherent force of character, and other civilizing capacities, could do the work which Providence has com- mitted to these three great Empires ? What is that work ? To reclaim the largest and most populous con- tinent of the world from the waste of heathenism and the blight of moral darkness ; to lift it up to the light INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 45 und lovol of Cliristian civilization. A vast enterprise tliis, most truly. If an arid desert is to be irrigated to fertility, where must the water come from ? Certainly from the green land of springs that surrounds it. If (Jenti-al Asia is such a moral desert, and must be irrigated with the water of a new life, what green lands surround it tliat can turn upon it their healthy and fertilizing springs? Can there be two reasonable or truthful answers to that (juestion? England, Russia and America are the only counti'ies surrounding Asia than can supply these springs. Each is fitted with remarkable capacities for its part of the conniion work — by local position, by history, by fun- damental institutions, and civilizing force of character. See how these three Powers are converging toward each othei-, as they bear down in their triangular march upon Asia. There is Russia, deploying southward on her march across the continent. Is she not the only power on earth in position to do the work of Christian civilization for the northern half of Asia ? Let us be fair, and appreciate historical facts honestly. Has any other Power, with the same capital of moral force, done more for the empire of civilization in the dark places of the world than she has done in the last century ? Could we put France, Italy, or even Germany in her place, could either of them do more than she is now doing to this great end ? It is not what she was in Peter's day, or in that of Nicholas, that is to guide our opinion, but what she is now and what she is to be in the steady growth of her civilizing power. We see the indices of that growth in the emancipation of her serfs, and in freeing and sending home 10,000 Persian subjects enslaved in Khiva. It is inevitable ; Russia must and will widen her empire and her power southward ; the great work assigned her requires it, and Providence will allow no interpellation of temporary suspicion to interrupt " the order of the day" it has established. Let us now turn to England on the south, with more 46 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. than a third of the population of Asia under her rule. We do not see her there as the England of Hastings and Clive, but as the England of to-day and to-morrow. As such we know what she is doing there, and what she has to do, and what she has to do it with. We see her work of moral irrigation going on, and the growths of living green that line the streams in widening belts. We read of the railways and electric telegraphs, of the common schools by the thousand, and other institutions, she is planting over the vast region under her softening and beneficent sway. It is inevitable. She is under the motive necessity of her position. She must, she will widen her empire northward, until there shall be no more Himalayas as the boundary of civilization. The moral forces work slowly in their first terms of action on dark and dense masses of mankind, but they follow the geome- trical order of progression, and at later steps produce results of stupendous importance. By that rule England has been working as long as Russia in Asia. She had the most enlightened, and Russia the most benighted, popu- lation of the continent to work upon. Each is producing its proportionate results for the races divided by the Himalayas. Now let us turn to America, and its part and lot in the great work as one of the Allied Powers. America, if Europe's west, is Asia's east, its nearest Pacific neigh- bour. So far as direct and easy contact is concerned, America abuts broadside on to the eastern half of that populous continent. This is the civilizing force of its local position, and by virtue of this local position alone it is more in effective contact with Eastern than Russia is with Northern Asia. Its head springs of civilization are nearer than Russia's, nearer than England's to that side of the continent, and they will grow nearer and nearer in proximity from year to year, for all the centuries to come. For English America and American England, both the Great Republic and the growing Dominion on its north, INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 47 are peopling the vast areas west of the Mississippi, and west of the Rocky Mountains, duplicating their Atlantic ))oris and commerce on the Pacific coast, anrl planting it from sea to mountain with their most vigorous comm'ini- ties. China and Japan will for evermore be the nearest foreign neighbours to Pacific Am(3rica. This is not theory; it is not a prospective possil)ility merely ; it is an active reality, even now, at the advanced sbige of experience. The steamships that now ply between America's west and Asia's east make more frequent departures and arrivals than those of the Atlantic did between Livei-pool and New York in 184G. They will increase to weekly inter- vals, then to daily, perhaps in the same time that this rate was reached between Europe and the United States. For when the American railway system between the Missis- sippi and the Pacific shall have been developed to its full design and capacity, Europe must share largely in this Pacific commerce. But the<e capacities of proximity and commerce are among the minor civilizing forces that fit America as a partner Power with England and Russia in the great work of reclaiming Asia to a Christian civilization. She is bringing to bear upon this work forces of a far higher grade of moral power. She is not now, and never will be, planting American communities in China or Japan, as normal schools of instruction in the life of municipal insti- tutions and self-governing populations. But she is doing more than this, more than she would if she planted and peopled a town of 10,000 Americans every year in those countries. She is taking into her own States Chinese by tens of thousands yearly, to apprentice themselves to her industrial occupations and machinery of laboui", to learn what these and all else that they see, handle, use, hear and enjoy may teach them. This is not the only class of learners that are to carry back and disseminate such in- struction through their native countries. There are hun- dreds of Chinese and Japanese students in American 48 CHirS FROM MANY BLOCKS. ♦ collo^'uH antl scliool.s, fittin*.^ themselves to liccoine teachers at home of a higlier education. Then American instruc- tors in every department of industrial and social science, professors of colleges, noriual and connnon school teachers, political economists, bankers, merchants, railway and telegraph constructors, master mechanics, and other men of the best skill and experience in the arts of enlightened civilization, are doing their best to impait them to the whole Empire of Japan, which is opening its doors widely and gladly to admit them. This, then, is the part of the great mission assigned to America as a partner with England and Russia ; and she is not disobedient or blind to the calling of Providence. It is inevitabhi. There is no discharge for her from this task and duty. She must, she will, march with these civilizing forces westward and inward upon Asia from the whole length of its Pacific coast. Now, who can look at these movements and detach one from the other, in its progress and result ? Who can fail to see that these Powers are converging towards each other, and to one great momentous end, in their triangular march upon Asia ? Then, is it not time that the three great Empires thus fitted and called to such an enterprise, and at this moment engaged in it with such small and lessening spaces between them, should recognize the alliance in which Providence has joined them by bonds which they cannot sever ? Is it not time for their statesmen to say what the poet sings : — " And howsoever this wild world may roll, " Between your peoples truth and manful peace, * England — Russia — America." This enlightened and generous sentiment is what is at this moment most needed to ensoul the policy and atti- tude of the Three Powers toward each other. "Truth and manful peace" should be their watchword and coun- tersign on this grand march for humanity. Truth, not the fitful vagaries of a suspicious imagination. Manful INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 49 [H-aco -peace that wears tlie liriglit face ot* that nohle manly coura^'e which nations niUHt yet learn, the courage to helieve that what you would not do to another, another would not do to you. " Howsoever this wild W(;rld may roll," this cori'elative and complement of " the golden rule" Englaml, Russia and America must learn and pi'actice on this march. Let no one be offended at the repetition. The day is coming — it is near at hand — when England and Russia must meet broadside on in Asia, just as the United StateH meet Enghvnd in America. They must see what the outside world sees, tliat the day must come on this conv(!rging march eastward when their developing Empires shall meet in the thin and common boundary of a geometrical line. Why should they not thus meet in " manful peace ? " Why should one or both wish a wide or narrow waste of heathenism between them ? Why should there be more need of such a sterile space between them than one of equal width between Russia and Germany ? Does commerce, still affected by the traditions of a policy gone for ever, recoil from this proximity ? Commerce is not a war, but a friendly trade between two countries, as helpful to one as to the other Could Russia, then, injure British India by selling to it and buying of it more than now ? Does political Gov- ernment apprehend the proximity ? The British rule in India is not that of Hastings or Clive. If it is not now all that Indian millions can love, Britain can make it one of the best in the world for them, a Government which they would not exchange for one that any other Power could establish. Can religion shrink from the conter- minous line ? Such a line would only mark the centre of the widest continent, over which the banner of the same Cross would float from the Indian Ocean to the Frozen Sea. These are a few thoughts which the view from an America,n standpoint suggests to the English mind. 50 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. AMERICA'S DEBT OF NATIONAL HONOUR. Among private gentlemen of fastidious sensibility there are no obligations regarded more sacred than debts of honour. These debts are a self-acting law unto themselves, which defines their character, and prescribes their payment, and enforces it by an authority which no wiitten law of the land confers. Nor do these debts of honour belong merely or mostly to the duelling code. They are obligations founded in the most refined sensibilities of cultivated men, and all the more sacred, exacting and respected because they are out of the jurisdiction and reach of statute law. Nor are they debts of deportment, propriety or etiquette merely, which one gentleman owes to another. They are often money obligations which no legal authority can enforce or recognise as binding upon any individual who assumes them. And chiefly for this reason are they called debts of honour, which even thieves respect as their "higher law," as well as gamblers of the highest social grade, and horse-race and boat-race betters. If such individuals can and do manifest such fastidious sensibilitv to obligations which no written laws impose, enforce, or define, or even allow as legitimate, how much more sacred ought great nations to hold their debts of honour to^each other ! And no nation in the wide world has hanging on its reputation for sheer equity an unpaid debt of honour of such sacred obligation as the United States. Even measured by the low code of the card-table and the horse-race, it is a debt which no individual could repudiate without losing caste among men who pretend to be gentlemen. But measured by the moral standards of a nation that prof»3sses to be the living embodiment of justice, law, and equity, and of highbred civilization, it is a debt that touches " the immediate jewel of its soul," and it cannot be left unpaid without a fleck upon that precious treasure. Let us thoughtfully consider the character of this unliquidated obligation. INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 51 We have heard of " Courts of Honour " established or proposed, not to solve questions of justice and equity, but questions of sensibility between gentlemen of a high sense of honour. Well, while other nations had resorted to no other tribunal than the duellists' code provided for the settlement of their difficulties, the United States and England erected in the very heart of Christendom the sul)limest Court of Equity and Honour the world had ever seen. To that bar, the loftiest one this side the great white throne of Eternal Justice, they brought the aggra- vated and complicated case of controversy between them. None ever submitted to a human tribunal involved more complex questions and difficulties. But the two great Christian Powers who, by taking hold of hands, could make their fingers meet around the globe, laid aside armaments that could have shaken its lands and seas, and stood before the august bar of their own creation in their civil dress, claiming nothing that pure equity and honour, as determined by that tribunal, should not prescribe. It was the grandest spectacle the by-standing nations ever witnessed. It was a new point of departure in the history of the human race, laying doM'^n a line in the chart of a coming civilization for all present and future empires, kingdoms, and republics to follow. How many millions, with shoulders peeled and bent with 'wars past and prospective, looked to the great court at Geneva as if its arbitrament were to emancipate them from their long and cruel bondage to the blood and iron of brute force ! The grand court was organized and opened with a bench of judges whose ermine was as spotlessly pure as any that ever sanctified a human tribunal. The most eminent advocates of the two nations stood before them with their briefs. What was to be the scope of their plea ? That was the first question to be discussed and decided. The world, to the extremest frontiers of civilization, heard the discussion and the decision. It heard what was to be excluded from the case and what it was alone to include. 52 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. An innimierable cloud of witnesses and hearers sur- rounded the court, though so few of them were visible. On their memories is written and legible to-day what the court decided the case should reject and what it should only admit. Half the millions of the civilized world could testify to that point with their sign manual. He who now personates the highest institution and idea of American justice was there, and he knows precisely what the decision was from its first to its last syllable and comma. The distinguished advocate who ])leaded the American case with all the force of his eloquence, and who is now the mouth of the Union to other Powers, was there, and knows fully and minutely what grounds were allowed within the scope of his argument. Our National Government, Congress, and people knew and know that the very name and shadow of claim for consequential damages were excluded from our case; that only the losses of individual sufferers by the Confederate cruisers were to be taken into account and provided for in the award of the tribunal. There was no ambiguity noi- shadow of turning nor possibility for a doubt in this clearly defined agretnient. In every possible way by which our Government could acknowledge and assume the duty and office, it accepted the Geneva award solely in trust for the individual sufferers by the Confederate cruisers. By the obligations of this duty and office it was to ascertain who were these sufferers, what were just and equitable claims, and to liquidate them fully and fairly from the money held in sacred trust for this sole purpose. And when every such just and honest claim is thus satisfied, the whole of the intent and compass of the award is accomplished and realized. The trust is exhausted. The trustee has no right in law, equity, or honour to a farthing of the money remaining in his hands. Nothing could be more dishonour- able on his part than the effort to trump up a pretended book account of his own against the truster, and seize the INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. ^ 53 l)alance loft to satisfy that bogus claim. If our Govern- ment should put into its own treasury a single dollar of the Geneva award against " consequential claims," the act, by the clearest law of honour and equity, would be a down- right theft or embezzlement. It would repudiate the most sacred obligation a nation could give before the world by holding the Geneva Tribunal in contempt, rejecting the basis of its award, and perverting it to a purpose which both parties agreed should be put out of coui-t. ■ Then on what other grounds can our Government claim the shadow of a right to retain a dollar of the unexpended award, after all the losses of individuals have been fully satisfied ? If our Government were an individual trustee, some one might say that it could charge a commission on the money it received and distributed, and appropriate the bala,nce left to pay for its own time and expense in administering the trust fund. Perhaps some one, search- ing for a plausible excuse, may point to the great cost of the Geneva Court, and of the Arbitration Court at Wash- ington instituted to obtain and apportion the award. But who paid the bills of cost for these courts ? Did not the whole nation pay them in the very way that it pays the expenses of our own Government, and did not the men who had their ships burnt by the Confederates pay their proportion of the cost of the courts of award and distribution? But suppose a considerable number of astute lawyers could make such a claim on the balance of the award plausible, what patriotic American would be willing that our Government should put in a bill for commission on the money obtained and apportioned, and seize the whole balance in its hands in payment of its fee? How would that sound and look to the outside world ? A dead tiy vitiates the apothecary's pot of ointment, however precious it may be. An iron-rust tinge across the face of the most finely-sculptured statue spoils the the work of its artist and the pleasure of its owner. Jf 54 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. our Government puts a dollar of the Geneva award into its own treasury, on the claim of consequential damages, or of a lawyer's commission as a trustee, it will smutch with a blotch of iron --ust the whitest bar of equity and honour ever erected i. i the history of mankind. What nations would venture to bring their questions before that bar for solution, if they felt themselves exposed to such sharp practice ? Shall our Government be the first to bring contempt or suspicion upon a tribunal which has done such large justice to us and which our new Presi- dent, at the very outset of his administration, has so heartily commended to the confidence of all civilized Powers ? Every American patriot who holds his coun- try's honour as a priceless treasure should feel that he has a deep interest in the answer to be given to this question. That answer is soon to be discussed, just as if other than one alone could be given. There are givings out, now and then, here and there, of intimations how and for what the balance of the Geneva award may be retained and " covered " into the treasury of the trustee, to be appro- priated to some national object. There is imminent danger that our Government may be tempted to find some plausible excuse for this sharp practice. To avert this danger, every man between the two oceans who has his country's honour at heart, and feels what course it should dictate, ought to " cry aloud and spare not," " Send back that money ! " THE JURY OF THE VICINAGE. A NEW characteristic of this latter-day civilization has been recently developed, which our great men, and all who aspire to a great position and reputation, may well regard with peculiar interest. Lord Bacon submitted his INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 55 reputation to the verdict of a distant posterity whose judgment would not be biased by the personal prejudices of the men of his own time. Other illustrious candidates for fame have looked to the jury of a coming generation to do them justice. And few of those appealing to such a court have lived to enjoy or know the verdict it ren- dered to them. In no other country is a public man's reputation so long in chancery as in America. If he have reached the highest place in the nation, and filled it faith- fully, the contemporary estimate of his character is only ex 'parte. He is only the head and representative of a poli- tical party, generally in power by a small majority. More than any other man, he has to bear the prejudices and antagonisms arrayed against that party, not only while in the Presidential chair, but after he leaves it. He cannot expect to see the true and permanent status of his character determined or recognised by the mind of the nation during his lifetime. Sometimes it requires more than one generation to do justice to him. For an illustration, the verdict as to the character and relative place of Andrew Jackson, is not yet fully made out. It will take two or three decades more to reach a national and permanent estimate. But with the new faculties of mind and motion which steam and electricity have created, the old has given place to a new order of things. And in this new order a " jury of the vicinage " has been empanelled to sit en permanence upon public characters and public acts and national policies. And it is a jury that is not affected by local prejudices or interests, but a true verdict finds and renders, unbiased by these influences, so powerful on a lower court. Two American cases have been recently appealed to this great outside jury, with a result which does honour to our whole nation, and which proves that when one of our great men finds his character hanging in the meshes of a partizan court at home, " like the poor man's right in the law," he can " change the venue," and 56 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. appeal confidently to that great and impartial tribunal that sits for judgment outside his own country. First, let us take the case of Seward ; for no American, nor English, nor any other character in modern or ancient history, was ever submitted to the Grand Jury of the outside world with such a verdict as honoured him. He was never President, though he aspired to that position, and sought it too eagerly as some thought. Both political parties recognised his great talents, and the power with which he wielded them in his country's cause during the trying and momentous years of the Civil War. Even his political opponents were constrained to admit that he was a patriotic, as well as broad-minded statesman. But when he stepped down and out of his great office with the marks of an assassin's knife upon him, he was, per- haps, the most unpopular public man in the country. And the unkindest cuts of denunciation came from organs of his own party. In view of these fierce diatribes, and the general sentiment of the country apparently against him, one might have reasonably thought at the time that his public life had been decided by the Ameri- can people as a failure, and that they had pronounced a verdict against him which could never be reversed. But there was a great outside Court of Appeal ready and waiting to reverse the hasty verdict of his country- men, and to do full and noble justice to the deposed statesman. Never before in the history of the world did a man bring his character for judgment before such a court. It was literally a tribunal composed of all races, tribes and human tongues. Brahmins and Buddhists, Mohammedans and Pagans, Hindoo, Ceylonese and Egyp- tian peasants, sat on " the jury of the vicinage," and the verdict of the great court of nations was unanimous that he had deserved well of his country, and that his charac- ter was known and honoured in all countries. The grea^ ministers of oriental empires received him with profound veneration, and asked counsel of his wisdom, experience INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 57 and patriotism to guide them in their public duties. The black and half-naked peasants of India, Ceylon and Egypt seem to have heard of him, and were ready to do him reverence. And all around the globe he carried his country with him. He incarnated himself in it, and im- pressed its image upon every honour he received. All who saw him in those far-off countries, recognised and received him as the living impersonation of his country, of its wisdom, virtue, power and place among the nations. Such was the case he appealed to the Supreme Court of Nations ; such was the verdict he brought back to his home, and which no partisan nor minor tribunal can wer reverse or impair. And now we have another great American case going before the jury of the vicinage. Twenty years ago, per- haps, no middle-class man of the same intellectual force and social status was more unlikely to become President of the United States than Ulysses Grant. Before the Civil War he had won no military or civil distinction. Indeed, he appeared to have abandoned the military pro- fession altogether, and to possess no special talent for any other occupation. As a civilian, he had never been ap- pointed to fill any municipal office, not even to serve as a constable, so far as we know. He made all the history that carried him to the Presidency in the Civil War. He won that great distinction in a four years' campaign as a soldier. When chosen to the chief magistracy of the nation, he took the exalted place without the slighest pretension to any previous training or experience to fill it successfully. Holding the great seal of the nation to impress upon every act of national legislation before it could become law, he had never been member of a State assembly or town council. And yet he was expected and required to think and act like a profound and experienced statesman. It is, and always will be, a marvel that he thought and acted as well as he did in the most critical period of the country's history. Undoubtedly, if those D 58 CHIPa FROM MANY BLOCKS. who surrounded hiui had permitted him the free play of his own thought, he would have made himself a better President of the whole nation. But greater men than he had yielded to the counsels they had invoked to guide them in the great office he filled. He began to yield to influences he could not resist, and which gradually de- flected his course from the high level he had been expected, and which he seemingly had at first intended, to maintain. Gradually many of the very founders of the great party that put him in power fell away from him, and oi)posed his re-election. Many of the great ma- jority that carried him into his second term soon began to be dissatisfied with certain features of his public character and policy. Some even began to call these habits and tendencies Grantimn, others, Ccesarism. So, when he stepped down from his high place and power, in the exciting and perilous complications of a new Presidential election, the roaring and foaming waves of political emotion seemed to bury him and his history out of sight. He appeared to be as unpopular, or as much forgotten by the nation, as Seward when he retired to private life. Small reverence was paid to him as he travelled about the country, and his character and history seemed to find neither judgment nor hearing in the home court of the public mind. But, as in Seward's case, the jury of the vicinage was in session to do him justice. Its verdict, as rendered by the great Anglo-Saxon Empire of the Old World, is complete and unanimous. Never before did England and other Eluropean countries empanel such a jury to sit upon the character and status of a man of another nation ; for it embraced all ranks from the sove- reign on the throne to the operative at the hammer, spin- dle and loom. We have all read their verdict, which no inferior or local court can ever reverse. Grant is passing on to other tribunals, at which his character and history will have a hearing and a judgment which will do honour to his country, as well as to himself. INTERNATIONAL QUESTIONS. 69 For if the honour were divided, his own part would be worthless. It is a high merit of his mind that he sees and feels this. And it will do credit to his country to see and feel it too. CHAPTER II. THE EASTERN QUESTION. POWER AND PERIL OF A NATIONAL ILLUSION. POWKB AND PEUII> OF A NATIONAL ILLUSION— COST AND PEUIL OP PRECAU- TION— THE EASTBKN QUESTION— KUSSIA's AMBITION AND ITS COMPABA- TIVE BE8ULTS. ATIONS of great power and renown have shown themselves as much subject to strange idiosyncra- sies or optical delusions of the mind as individual men. The one which stands in the very first rank in Christian civilization has been the greatest victim of these vagaries and hallucinations. England for two hundred years has sacrificed rivers of precious blood, and treasure which arithmetic can hardly measure, to the veriest bug- bear of her imagination. Every war she has waged on the continent of Europe for the past two centuries has been to create or maintain a balance of power, for her own im- agined security, without reference to the wish or well- being of the people of those countries who were to be put in this scale or that to efi'ect the adjustment. Look at the long wars in the reign of William of Orange and Queen Anne, chiefly to put a German prince on the throne of Spain instead of Philip of France. N ot the slightest refer- ence was made by England and her allies to the question which of the two princes the Spanish nation preferred for their king, or which of them would best promote the in- terests of the people. If a French king were allowed to ascend the throne, he would annex or ally Spain to France, and the French power thus increased would be sure to be arrayed against England. But could not France and Spain be as easily and effectively united against Eng- THE EASTERN QUESTION. 61 land wlicn separato powers as if thoy were under one sceptre ^ Has she not found this true several times in lier own experience ? Of course the balancc-of-power system, whieli has cost so many years of war and such a (ii'hige of human blood, is of no avail in time of peace. But whatdoes it amount to in war? Has not England proved to tlio world that the balance of power is not in favour of the country that has the largest territory or population, but in favour of the nation which has the largest balance of money in the bank ? It was her money-power that overthrew the first Napoleon, or the allies which it could bi'ing into the field. For a century and more, England has victimised herself to this balance-of-power bugbear. For more than one hundred years the American colonies encountered their greatest peril from the wars of the mother-country to up- hold this strange vagary. Her long conflicts with France brought down upon the feeble and scattered settlements of New England the savage raids of the French and In- dians from Canada. The colonists were involved in all the hostilities she led in Europe. They had to put their small towns under watch day and night, against foes by sea as well as land ; against French, Dutch, or Spanish, as well as Indians. At her summons they sent forth their little military contingents to Canada, Nova Scotia and Cuba, where hundreds of them left their bones as a sacrifice to a theory v/hich has cost Christendom more bloodshed and misery than all the other causes of war put together. See what comes out of this national hallucina- tion. Here is the grand old nation whose history, up to within the century just past, was our history in all the glory that it had won. Here is the noble country of our ancestors, that can face any real eventuality — whatever it be or however suddenly it may come — with a courage which commands the admiration of the world. Here is the glorious old mother of the Anglo-Saxon race, and of ail the Engliph-speaking nations yet to be, who never 02 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. loMt a tinge of the red English blood of her cheek.s at the Indian mutiny, yet who treniblcH and turns pale before the thin spectre of her own imagination ! In a long residence in London I have seen or felt fogs that were as the blackness of darkness solidified. But one could partially account for them from the conditions of the atmosphere, and estimate the proportions of coal smoke that made the white fog from the river such a " blanket of the dark " wrapped around the great city. But the cause and suddenness of the ague-shakes of an invasion-panic that seized the public mind you could re- fer to no facts precedent or theories subsequent. There was no smoke nor cloud of unfriendly augury on the hori- zon of Europe to account for the outbreak of one of these panics which I witnessed with wonder. To be sure, a short article had appeared, in a German newspaper I think, showing the lack of fortifications around the English coast to resist a foreign invasion. It is quite possible that this article was " inspired," if not written, by some Eng- lish aspirant to military office and honour ; for the pres- sure upon "the two services," on army and navy, for place and pay would astonish the world if the facts were known. But no more places and pay could be made for the aristocratic and eager applicants without " increased defences " on land and sea, and these could not be voted without stirring the nation to a vehement sense of its danger. So the old machinery was set in motion to this end. First, articles in the organs of " the two services " began to follow each other in quick succession, to show the helpless condition of England in case of foreign inva- sion. Then the great journals of London began to sound the alarm. Finally the military alarmists induced the Duke of Wellington to write a letter confirming these ap- prehensions, and, in his blunt way, stating how much additional moaey it would require " to set England on its legs again," as he expressed it. The fever-and-ague of the panic was now at its height, and some of the utter- THE EASTERN QUESTION. G3 ancoa under its deliriuni 1 well remember. One writer drew up a programme of defence which .shows the violence of the ague-shakes. Assuming that the French would meet with no serious opposition to their landing on the Kent or Sussex coast, he proposed that all the trees lining the road from Dover to London should be cut down and placed across it to delay the march of the invaders. Next, as soon as the landing of the French army was announced, the Queen and Eoyal Family were to be sent off to York for safety. Then, it was almost certain that the French would head straight to Windsor to capture the Queen, and, finding she had flown, would march immediately to secure the second object of their invasion, or the Bank of England. In doing this theij* army would have to pass through the Strand and the narrow Fleet street, and the writer proposed that all the buildings on each side be blown down upon the invaders. This is a sample of the letters that appeared in the public press which produced one of the periodical invasion-panics in England. And all this while not an act or expression on the part of France could be cited as showing any unfriendly purpose or feeling toward England. The whole of this excitement grew out of a groundless and spontaneous suspicion. The same suspicion has involved England in this waste- ful and deplorable antagonism to Russia on the Eastern question. This antagonism arrays her against the progress of Christian civilization and allies her to the most para- lyzing despotism in the world. It belies and degrades the great position she claims as the van-leader of free nations and the institutions of freedom. It belies the best in- stincts of her people. Let any great disaster by fire, flood, or pestilence fall upon any city or country on the globe, and whose heart is more quickly and generously moved toward the sufferers, or whose hand brings more liberal succour to them than England's ? What people hate slavery or oppression more than the English ? But see how all these generous sympathies ami impulses are falsi- 64 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. fied or disappear in the position England assumes toward Russia in her determination to uphold and perpetuate the integrity and independence of the Turkish dominion and despotism. Here is a power that sits like a nightmare on the very bosom of the Old World. All the races and countries beneath it feel th^ deadening chill of its fingers. The Christian population who feel it most cry out, in their despair. " Lord, how long !" They cry to man as well as God ; and Russia, of the same religion and race, endeavours to come to their help. She is the only power in the wide world that ever attempted to help them, or ever showed any sympathy for them. They look to her as their only earthly saviour, and she would save them if not prevented by a power that claims to be the greatest lover and defender of freedom and the rights of man in Europe. Twenty years ago Russia assayed, not to break, but to lighten, the yoke of Turkish despotism, galling and bending the necks of these Christian populations. But England rushed in and let slip the dogs of war against the liberator. Her dogs, and other dogs of equal bay and bite, tore her and chased her back wounded and bleeding to her own country. Well, twenty years more of the same yoke have been borne by these Christian populations ; for the Great Powers, who chased away their deliverer, did nothing to lessen the weight and degradation of their bondage. Again Russia approaches to help them, and again England confronts her with her sharp-bitten dogs of war. To them, in their longing to be free, these Eng- lish dogs are what the slave-holder's trained blood-hounds were at the heels of the slave, running for life and liberty. Now, what Christian mind or heart that loves human freedom can dwell upon this position of England without feeling that it is unworthy of her best self, and all she claims to be and do as a leader and defender of civilisa- tion ? What is the argument by which she justifies this position ? Put in her own terms, it is only the language THE EASTERN QUESTION. of that wild and delirious suspicion that breeds her French -invasion panics. It is this: " That if Russia should seize Constantinople, she would pour her Cossack hordes into Western Europe, crush constitutional freedom, and invade and conquer India." I would ask any candid, reasoning mind to analyze the vagaries of this assumption. First, then, in regard to the aggressive capacity of mere location. If Russia has the heart and thought to spring with the bound of a beast of prey upon Western Europe, why should she wait until she has seized Constantinople as a springing-point ? Boys, when competing at a " run- ning-jump," always begin to run a rod or two back of a line at which they are to begin their leap, in order to get the momentum of the race. If Russia would have such a momentum for her bound upon Western Europe and con- stitutional freedom, w^hy should she go a thousand miles to the Bosphorus to run for the leap ? COST AND PERIL OF PRECAUTION. " To-day there is not a man, woman or child in all these nominallv Christian lands who does not bear on his or her own person the curse of a cowardly precaution — past, present and prospective. See what this policy in the past has put upon the people of England. She spent more than five thousand millions of dollars in her wars with the French Republic and Napoleon. Two-thirds of her national debt to-day are the inheritance of these wars begun on a principle which the whole English people now thoroughly detest. They were from first to last wars of precaution, the sheer offspring of a suspicion that if they were not waged there and then something might happen to England in some distant future, or, as the Duke of Wellington put it, the best place for the defence of Eng- GQ CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. land was on the Spanish Peninsula. Look at the Crimean war. Was not that a mere precautionary measure, to intercept a contingency th'^-t might arise a century hence? Was it not offering the incv^nse of a terrible reality to the mere spectre of an imaginnoion ? Or to head off a Rus- sian protectorate over the Christian populations of Turkey, lest it might alienate them from the despotism that oppresses them, and prepare the way for Russian ascendancy ? What is it that makes the Eastern question so perilous to the peace of Europe and Asia, except the spirit and policy of precaution ? Why has England .spent such rivers of precious blood and millions of treasure, and is willing to double her sacrifice in each, except to prevent Russia from becoming as near a neigh- bour to her in India as she herself is to us on this conti- nent, or as Russia is to Sweden and Prussia in Europe ? Look at the experience which the policy of precaution has brought upon France through only six months' trial of the regime of suspicion. She rushed into the war as a " precautionary measure" against the new and increasing strength that Prussia was acquiring from her union with the other Grman states — a union which her precautionary war consolidated and strengthened to a power which pros- trated her in tlie dust. This is but a partial glimpse at the policy of pre- caution and its results to the nations that have adopted it in the past. One might reasonably think' that they would have learned to distrust and abandon this policy after such an experience. But look at the present. There was not a year in the great wars with Napoleon, when they involved America in the struggle, that witnessed such an expenditure of treasure as has been imposed upon the people of Christendom in these last twelve months, for preparation for war in time of peace. It is estimated that there are at the present moment 5,000,000 men under arms in these Christian countries ; that they are all straining their capacities to put upon the sea new iron- THE EASTERN QUESTION. 07 clads, and new armoured forts upon the land. We are told that Germany is erecting new fortifications all round her borders ; that eighty new forts are to be built around Cologne in the west and nine around Posen in the east. It would appear that nearly a hundred are in process of erection or projected. Says the military report, speaking of the two first-class fortresses on the Upper Danube, " they would be very important centres of attack against Vienna in the event of a new war with Austria," thus plainly indicating their " precautionary" purpose and value. Here, then, we have the present development and illus- tration of the policy of precautionary measures for the j)eace and safety of nations. Every regiment of these 5,000,000 armed men is put on foot, every iron-clad is put on the sea and every fort on the land for precaution — a policy which, like the dropsy, grows by what it feeds upon. In the light of common sense, experience and pliilosophy, it is the experiment of putting out fire with oil. Here are 5,000,000 men organized in armies, all animated with the military spirit ; all ambitious of dis- tinction in the real business of war, and tired of playing at it in camps and forts and barracks. Here are the great industrial masses borne down under a tax of $1,500,000,- 000 a year for the support of these idle b <t restless armies, and weighted with the constant fear of war which these precautionary measures always excite in the public mind. Now, then, is it too early or too irrelevant to ask the Democratic party, should they come into power, if they will adopt a new point of depp.rture in regard to this ])reposterou,s armed-peace system which is devouring the nations, and which is now trying to deceive this nation in the new euphemism, " precautionary measures?" If the Democratic party comes into power, will they too " give the bluest veins" of this nation to the insatiable horse-leech of the armed-peace system, and let it suck the 68 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. blood of our industries with its present appetite ? Will they, too, let it grow by what it feeds upon ? Where else in the wide world did it ever gi-ow at such a ratio of rapidity ? Can any other nation show anything like this? — in round numbers, $39,000,000 for army and navy in the two years, 1850 and 1851, and $146,000,000 for both in 1873 and 1874 ! If the Democratic party comes into power will they carry this nation into a war with any other on a question of less aggravated difficulty than that we satisfactorily settled by arbitration at Geneva ? Will they, too, go on spending millions on precautionary measures against a less aggravated difficulty ? Did we use or need such measures to insure a satisfactory settlement of our great question at Geneva? Or are we to adopt them only when we have a case of contention with some small power like Spain or Mexico ? If the Democratic party comes into power, will they recognise and reverence what is meant by der)ios, not only in this but in every other country ? Will they respect its inalienable rights and its common sensibilities, and remember that they are dealing with peoples as well as governments, and that any treaty or settlement that wounds their self-respect, and which they must endure under a sense of wrong, subjects the power that exacts it to the perpetual burden of a guilty conscience, and to the restless conviction that what is wrong is never settled. These are a few of th.e questions which may properly be addressed to the Democratic party while it is now making up its programme of policy in anticipation of its ascendancy to the helm of the American Government. They are questions vital to the policy of reform and retrenchment. They must be honestly, boldly and suc- cessfully grappled with before any sensible relief can be wrought out for this tax-burdened nation. One might as well hope to bail out a water-logged ship with a teaspoon THE EASTERN QUESTION. 69 as to attempt to ease the heavy burden now weighing the people of Christendom to the ground without lifting from their necks the leaden load of what Disraeli calls " the bloated armaments" of civilized nations, but which the most recent authority describes in the gentler phrase^ " precautionary measures." THE EASTERN QUESTION. No people in the world have a stronger and 'more out- spoken sense of independence than the Americans. We are now one hundred years old as a nation, and we in- vited the whole outside world of kingdoms and republics to celebrate with us this centennial birthday. And they accepted the invitation, and came t'^ us bringing the best jewellery of their arts and industries to adorn the celebra- tion. We have shown them, and they have seen and acknowledged, what a great country we own, and what a great people we have become. We have shown them what public schools we have, and what they are doing for the education of the masses of our population, and what a power to this end our newspaper press has acquired. Then there is an ocean space of three thousand miles be- tween us and the nearest country in Europe. We have never had any " entangling alliance " with any European l)ower, nor any national interest or part in the origin, motive, or issue of any conflict or controversy on that continent. Surely if any nation in this wide world ought to be in a condition to take a cosmopolitan view, and form an independent and impartial opinion of European questions, we should be that people. But we fall far short of our great prerogative and duty. The powerful English mind, with its mighty and multitudinous facul- ties of thought, intercepts oui* view of these questions and 70 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. events. We have bccotno ho accustomed to look at them through the medium which that mind makes for us, that they are all coloured by it, and often exaggerated and dis- torted out of all symmetry and truth. When one looks through a window painted red, blue, or green, he sees the real facts of the landscape in their actual size and loca- tion, but their colour makes them so unreal that he can hardly recognize them as belonging to any prospect lie has ever seen with his naked eye. But when he sees his own face in a globular mirror, he is almost startled at the distortion or disproportion of his features. They are all there, but they make a monster of him, and the idea of wealing such a face out into the world would be horrible to him. Now, so far as our secular and religious press indicates it, the American mind looks through the medium of the English mind at this great Eastern question, and accepts as realities all the aspects which that medium presents. Thus this great and independant nation, which, far above all others, should view all the facts involved in this ques- tion from a cosmopolitan point of view, seems to become more English in its conceptions and bias of opinion than the English people themselves. For in England fhere are a considerable and a gi-owing number of thoughtful per- sons who do not believe that Turkey, after four hundred years of probation, has proved her rule essential to the well-being of mankind ; and who think that the world would gain much if that rule were lifted from the bosom of two continents. But are there an equal number of persons in the United States of this opinion ? If so, how and where do they express it ? In what newspapers ? On what platform ? In what pulpit ? So far as Ameri- can opinion has manifested itself, is it not as Palmers tonian English in regard to Russia's history, character, progress, and designs, as any. Tory journal or magazine in Great Britain ? Do not our papers apply the same brute name and the same brutish instincts to Russia, and suspect her THE EASTERN QUESTION. 71 of ami charge her with tlie same propensity to prey upon defenceless peoples as the most pronounced English Rus- sophobists do in regard to that Power ? Indeed, are there half-a-dozen papers, or half-a-dozen public speakers in America that acknowledge that Russia has ever done, or ever intends to do, any good and honest work for civiliza- tion in Europe or Asia ? One might infer from the tone of many of our public journals, that Russia had done a great wrong to scores of heathen tribes in Asia by sup- pressing the independence of such a people as the Circas- sians, and by abridging their old hereditary and most highly prized liberty of selling their own children and stealing their neighbours' children for the market. We all know what England's point of view is in regard to this Eastern question. She lets the world know very distinctly what it is, and the view she takes from it. Does she pretend that she cares a snap of her fingers for either Mohammedans or Christians within the Turkish dominions in her determination " to uphold the integrity and independence of the Ottoman Empire ? " No ; far from it, she is honest and outspoken in her policy. If Russia's rule at Constantinople would be certain to lift up all the varied populations of that empire to the average level of European civilization, England would oppose with all her might Russia's possession of that capital. And she would do this not on the old balance-of -power principle, for it was assumed that all European nations were equally interested in that principle. She would do it on a worse principle — that one nation may prevent by force another nation from becoming its near neighbour. What is the correlative of this principle ? It is that the pretended law of self-defence would allow a power to expel as well as to repel another from its near neighbourhood. Why is not Russia as dangerous to Prussia or Sweden as she could be at Constantinople to England in India ? Has she been a bad neighbour to either of these States for the last fifty years ? Has she opj. ressed them in any way, or checked 72 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. their progress in material prosperity oi- civil freedom? She has been for all this period a thousand miles nearer to them than she would be on the Bosphorus to India. If she is such a northern bear and beast of prey, why has she not swallowed up little Sweden before this time ? If she has not had the heart or courage to do this, why are we Americans to entertain the fantasy that if she were at Constantinople she would undertake to swallow up the Indian Empire, with a population three times her own ? When at that capital would she be a mile nearer Calcutta than she is now ? How would she send her forces to India — by the' Suez Canal or under the British guns at Gibraltar ? Now these are some of the aspects in which the Ameri- can mind, in justice to itself and the world, ought to view this Eastern question, and to form an independent and impartial opinion upon it. These are some of the facts and bearings we ought to consider. We have made it an axiomatic truth that " governments are made for men and not men for governments," and that when they are not and cannot be made for men, they have neither reason nor right to exist. What kind of people is the Turkish Gov- ernment made for ? It has tried its rule upon Greeks, Servians, Bulgarians, Bosnians, and all kinds and branches of the Slavonic race, and upon as many different races on the other side of the Bosphorus. What has it done for them for the last hundred or any other hundred years ? What is it doing or promising to do for them to-day? Do we need more or longer proof that it is not made for men ? And when it has been thoroughly proved that a government is not made for men, no outside powers can uphold it long in existence. England at the head, or with them, may undertake to guarantee " the integrity and in- dependence of the Ottoman Empire." Perhaps they may, in Lord Derby's words, guarantee it against murder, and even against premeditated suicide. But older and greater powers have died of heart disease, and not one of them at THE EASTERN QUESTION. 73 the eve of dissolution ever showed more marked symptoms of that malady than the Turkish dynasty at tliis moment. But when such a government dies because it is not made for men, these do not die with it. There are three times as many Mohammedans under the British rule as under the Ottoman at this moment. Who can say that they lost anything they valued in their religion or civil condi- tion by a change of governments ? What would the Turks, as a people, lose of either if Russia ruled at Con- stantinople, and brought all races and parts of the Empire under Russian law and order ? And what outside nation would derive more material benefit from this change than England herself V What is the commercial value to her of all the regions now withering under Turkish rule ? It is rather singular how ditierently various race-cries or aspirations aftect the American mind. We generally sympathize deeply with the aspirations of communities of the same race to unite under one go\ ernment and form one people. There are thousands of native Americans who would say •' Ireland for the Irish." How our whole nation rejoiced at the union of ail the several branches of the Italian race in one consolidated nation, even when some of them had to be brought in by force ! We sym- pathized with both the aim and effort to unite the Ger- mans in a great empire. If the Belgians should think it would be better for them to become part of the French Republic or empire, than to continue as such a small state, and if they should vote by a great majority for it, we should sympathize with the aspiration and action in spite of all balance-of-power theories. Then why is Panslavism any more unnatural, more reprehensible, or more to be feared than these " isms," affinities, or aspirations of other races ? It is natural for Americans as well as other peoples to think that these horrible atrocities perpetrated upon her Christian populations, constitute the crime that should fasten the indignation of the civilized world upon Turkey. But these, fiendish as they are described, are E f%' CHIPS FllOM MANY RLOCKS. only occasional paroxysms of her spirit. There is some- thin<^r far worse in the long run of a people's life than these occasional ebullitions of rage. For the most deadly wounds inflicted on a people are such as do not bleed ; for bleeding wounds show life, a,nd can be healed. The slow, malarial disease cf despotism poisons the blood of a people, and they show its symptoms in every aspect of their moral, civil, and industrial life. If Panslavism un- der Russian rule should shut ofl" this poison from the Christian populations of European Turkey, and gradually heal the malady it has caused, who would lose hy the change ? There are a considerable number of the old American abolitionists still living, who remember well how deeply they were exercised forty years ago by the position which the American Board for Foreign Missions assumed toward slavery. " There were great searchings of heart for the divisions of Reuben," both at home and abroad, on that question. Few have forgotten the agitation produced by the pro-slavery leaning of that body, and how that a great number of its old supporters came out of it and formed the American Missionary Society as a protest against slavery and all aflilliation with it. There are many of us left who remembei" well the arguments or apologies for slavery urged from the platform, pulpit, and press, which we had to meet from year to year. I heard a New England senator of high standing in Church and State, declare in the United States Senate that American slavery had done more to evangelize and elevate the African race than all the Christian missionaries sent to that continent had ever done to that end. Never was a severer strain put upon the faith of thousands of Christians in this coun- try than this pro-slaverj'^ attitude of churches and religious bodies in all the Northern States. Many fell under the test, and all who stood it through would deeply regret to see the religious public in America subjected or exposed to a similar trial. But it will be well for that public to THE EASTERN QUESTION. 76 leniember that the people of this country hate .slavery as lieartily as ever, even if its victims are white instead of black, and are collective populations as well as individ- uals. And there is much reason to fear that this fact is not recognised by a great many Christian people and churches, and that they are drifting into a position on this Eastern question like that of the American Board, and nearly the whole religious public forty years ago in regard to American slavery. For I see in some of the religious as well as secular papers, a disposition to side with Turkey, to deny the number and character of her atroci- ties, or to cancel them by comparing them with cruelties committed by a Christian nation in Ireland, India, or Ashantee. Now it would be natural to expect that the American Dalgettys in the Turkish service, and the American manufacturers who forge, point, and polish bay- onets for the Bashi-Bazouks, should show a leaning toward Turkey, for they are well paid for it. But when we see our religious public leaning in the same direction under a dirt'erent motive, the fact assumes a serious aspect. It is a fact which can only be accounted for from the fear that, if Russia should come to Constantinople, our missionary institutions there might be endangered, just as England fears India would be from the same cause; and as she would prefer to see Constantinople for ever under Mo- hammedan rule than under a Christian power like Russia, so many earnest friends of our Turkish missions may feel the same preference, and thus drift into England's position on this Eastern question. Now in doing this they are in great danger of falling into the old mistake of the Ame.d- ean Board in regard to its attitude toward slavery in this country. Let us find a parallel of the position they are beginning to assume. There is a vast upas-tree planted at the centre of the Old World, on the dividing line of two continents. Its deadly branches reach outward 500 miles and more in every direction. Under their poisonous dripping the very ft CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. stones, the marble toiiiples and monuments of Grecian, Roman, and Hebrew civilization melt to dust. Nature herself is poisoned witli the subtle miasma; the ground is cursed vvitii it, and yields only thorns, thistles, and weeds, as the spontaneous harvest of indolence or hopeless indus- try. The populations of various race and tongue living under this shadow of death, take upon them its pallor, and feel its chill in their veins. But into the crotch of this monstrous tree umch drifting dust has settled, and made a mould of considerable depth. In this a few lovers of goodness and beauty have planted an exotic flower, which has grown luxuriantly to delicious bloom. Its delicate tinting and sweet perfume delight all who stop to see its beauty and breathe its odour. They cry out against the Northern Woodman coming with his axe to cut down the tree. They look and long for some strong arm to strike it from his hand. They invoke such an arm with the pathetic appeal, " Spare that tree ! Spoil not this precious flower ! Its sweetness and beauty are well worth all the little damage which the tree's shade does to the world. It is not so poisonous or unhealthy after all that is said and believed. These sickly complaining ^leoples would be poor and miserable under any ottier tree. Within all the great space it covers there would be just as much squalor, pallor, filth, indolence, and wretchedness under any shade or light. Spare that tree, then, for the flower's sake." Now, does not this argument or appeal sound like the sentiments we read in many of our religious papers, or hear uttered from the platform by religious speakers ? Sustinet qui transtulit is the faith engraven (m the seal of Connecticut. Why should not the warmest friends of the Turkish missions cherish the same faith, and believe that He who transplanted this vine will sustain it with- out the branches of a upas-tree on which to train its ten- drils or hang its fruit V _., , THE EASTERN QUESTION. 7t RUSSIA'S AMBITION AND ITS COMI'ARATIVE RESULTS. Neither individuals nor nations can achieve a great position in the world without an energetic ambition. The very eminence of the position attained is generally the measure of the force that ambition supplied in either case. In neither is it necessary that this force should be aggres- sive, or injurious to a community or to mankind. Suppose we attribute to national ambition the mighty expansion of the British Em]>ire, who has been injured by the force of that sentiment ? Were it not for the envy of rivals, it would be the unanimous verdict of the world that the great majority of the human race had gained in every interest by this extension of British rule over such vast, varied and detached portions of the globe. Seeing what England has done, and is doing, and preparing to do, for Christian civilization on every continent and island on which she raises her flag, all who love freedom and hate oppression might well wish that she should not only hold what she has, but also bring other legions and races under her rule. No civilized nation has crossed her or barred the way against this expansion of her Empire during the last fifty years. There are still unclaimed continents of barbarism lying in the waste of moral darkness, as it were, waiting for the touch of her regenei-ating hand. Let her march in and take possession, and hang them with the lights and plant them with the institutioiis which have come to such illumination and fruitage in America, Aus- tralia and other portions of her Empire. There is the whole of Africa, with the exception of a short, thin slice on its northern shore, open to her march. Let her do there what she is doing on other continents, and no one will block her way to the peaceful conquest. Let her extend her Indian P^mpiie east and west, if she can without wrong an<l bloodshed, until it absorbs Persia on the one side and Burmah on the other, and no true friend of humanity 78 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. would deem her ambition injurious to mankind. The civilized world is not afraid of it, in face of all the history of its achievements, though much of that history has been written in human blood. Well, Russia has been accused by England of an ambi- tion as guilty and dangerous as that which Brutus suspect- ed in Julius Caesar. What are the grounds of this accusa- tion that rest on historical, established facts ? May not intelligent, fair-minded Americans ask for these facts before they admit this charge ? The leading passages of Russia's history are, or ought to be, familiar to us. We know what she has suffered for European civilization, even if we deny or doubt that she has done anything to promote it. We know that for more than one century she served as a breakwater to stay the inrushing flood of Tartar barbarism from engulfing more western nations. We know that she bent under the rule of that degrading bar- barism so long that when she threw off the yoke, like all peoples that have bent under such bondage for generations, she went to her work with a stoop in the statur of her moral being. She had a, great work to do, the hardest soil on which to work, and the smallest means to work with. She had to push an agricultural population southward and eastward among nomadic, marauding tribes of different races, who swooped down like birds of prey upon all per- manent settlements within reach of their rough-riders. She found herself subjected to the same necessity of de- fensive conquests as England in India, and our Govern- ment in America. But in her long, slow march across the north of Asia to the sea, did she tread down a single germ or seed-grain of civilization ? Her code of laws and ju- dicial rule may have been rude and defective, but has any tribe between the Ural Mountains and the mouth of the Amoor been lowered or injured by their supremacy ? Has she seized upon an acre of lan<l that England claimed for India ? Would England to-day exchange tlie two cities of Delhi and Lucknow for all the acquisitions of Russia north of the Himalayas ? THE EASTERN QUESTION. W' But Russia's ambition was to imperil civilization in Western Europe. That was the standing charge and dan- ger. Let her once get a foothold at Constantinople, and she would march with her overpowering hosts upon her western neighbors and tread down their constitutional governments and subject them to her rule. Who were her nearest neighbours to be first overpowered ? Of course, they were Sweden, Prussia and Austria. But they had lived side by side with Russia in all good neighbourhood and mutual confidence for fifty years and more. In all this time what had they to complain of her ? When Hungary was virtually lost to Austria in 1848, did Russia take an acre of the insurgent country to pay her for restor- ing it to that Empire ? Had she ever laid a finger of violence upon the territory of Prussia or Sweden, or im- posed any restriction upon the scope and play of constitu- tional government in either of those kingdoms ? No ; such a charge was not made when England endeavuored to draw Prussia into the Crimea war, to repel the ambition of Rus- sia, to lighten the intolerable yoke of Turkish des[)otism on the necks of the Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire, that had been groaning in her ears for centuries. Even the peace-loving Victoria, in letters to the King of Prussia, recently published, expresses a genuine indigna- tion that he was so insensible to the peril of Russian am- bition to his kingdom. lier argument seemed to ask, " Why wait for an overt act of hostility on the part of Russia before taking up arms against her ? Why not do what England does in the case — suspect an intention, and go to war on that suspicion ? Grant that Russia has been safe and ne4ghbourly enough to you at Warsaw, how could you rest in peace to see her at Constantinople ? " Such is the argument of this suspicion. There is neithei* fear nor danger that Russia will march against western civilization from Warsaw, Riga or Cronstadt, but once at Constanti- nople, fifteen hundred miles further oft* with a hostile people there to watch and ward, nothing could save the 80 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. western nations from her overwhelming hosts. Could any vagary be nioi-e insensate than this weak fantasy of suspicion ? Yes; this dough-faced goblin of imagination has begotten a fantasy still more wild and deceptive. If Russia is more dangerous to western civilization at (Constantino- ple than at Warsaw or Cronstadt, she is still more peril- ous to England in India on the Bosphorus than she is now, a thousand miles nearer on the Caspian Sea, or on the northern brow of the Himalayas. Once at Constantino- jple, the conquest of India would be both inevitable and easy. So runs the imagination. In the history of the world did a great and powerful nation ever yield to such another fantasy ? Would the subjugation of European Turkey and the acquisition of Constantinople add any lighting forces to her army which Russia could trust for such an invasion ? Even if such an accession were pos- sible, how is she to reach India ? By sea or land ? Is she to march two thousand miles, through Armenia, Persia and Afghanistan, or to send her forces by sea, under the guns of Malta and Gibraltar, or to pass her fleets through the Suez Canal, where a hundred men could strand them all on the bottom in a single day, like as many clams when the tide is out, by cutting away a dozen rods of its bank and flooding the desert with its waters ? But suppose she should run the gauntlet of all these dangers by sea or land , and reach India with all the force she could muster on its borders. What then ? Why, she would meet an Empire second only to China in population, and of twice the strength of China as a h ^hting power. England would be there with her irrosistibio ironclads, and her bravest gen- erals, and such regiments as overwhelmed the Indian mutiny Australia, with a population equal to that of the American colonies in the Revolutionary War, would be by her side, and all the colonies and dependencies of her world-wide Empire would send their contingents to repel thti invasion. Russia knows this, even if her ambition THE EASTERN QUESTION. 81 could incline her to risk such an entei-prise. To suppose she would attempt it, is to yield to the senseless vagary of a wild imagination. But there is another fantasy that illustrates the force of these suspicions. For many decades it has been the policy of England to blockade Russia within the Black Sea, and to dispute and bar her right of way to the Medi- terranean. For what reason ? Because if admitted to tliat sea, she would make it a " Russian lake." These are the briefest words of the suspicion. Let us compare this vagary with the others of the brood. A Russian lake ! Is there another space of water of equal or of any size on the face of the globe so completely under the domin- ation of one naval power as the Mediterranean under that of England ? To say she is a first-class naval power is to belittle her status. She belongs to no class. She stands alone in her undisputed supremacy, without equal, rival, and almost without a second to her on the sea. But if, with Gibraltar and Malta and her fleets of tremendous ironclads, she fears that Russia would make the Mediter- ranean a Russian lake if admitted to its waters, there are all the navies of France, Spain, Italy, Austria, Turkey, Tunis and Egypt — there are nine-tenths of all the war ships of Europe on that sea to defend it against such j-,n imagined supremacy. Of the three vagaries of suspicion in regard to the aggressions of Russian ambition, this seems to be the most visionary and regretable. For it puts England in a permanent condition of supressed hos- tility to Russia, and excites a widespread sentiment of antipathy throughout the Empire against her, as an enemy that blockades them in time of peace, and robs them of one of the great natural rights of a nation, by barring its way to the only sea worth anything to it during nearly half the year. The American public mind is naturally and almost in- evitably one with England in nearly every position she as- sumes in her foreign policy. How intensely we sympa- 8$ CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. thized with her in her suppression of the Indian mutiny ! Public sentiment in this country went with her to a great degree in the Crimean war, which all parties in England now regard as a lamentable mistake, for it was natural for us to believe she would only fight for the right against the wrong. But we never sympathized with her in her periodical French invasion panics, for we did not believe that France had given her any cause for such agitating apprehensions. Are we less friendly to her because we cannot see any good reason for her fears of Russian am- bition in regard to her own interests or the progress of civilization ? CHAPTER III. NATIONAL QUESTIONS. THE FUTURE ELECTION OF PRESIDENTS. FUTURE ELECTION OP PRESIDENTS— THE TWIN DAUGHTERS OF THE HORSE- LEECH ; THEIR GREED AND CRY— THE WARDS OF THE NATION ; THEIR DEBT AND DUE — THE GOVERNMENT'S DEBT TO LAND AND LABOUR — WANT OF PUBLIC SPECIALTY MEN. ^HERE could be no better time nor reason than we have now for a thorough discussion of the question, how the people of this great continental nation shall hereafter elect their Presidents. For the crisis and com- plication which now affect them so profoundly illustrate the dangers and difficulties to which they are exposed by the present anomalous system. It would be a curious and really a profitable historical study to ascertain who of the fathers of our republic invented this system, or took the lead in elaborating it to its present capacity of thwarting the expressed will of the nation. Where he or they found in this, or any other country, a practice or suggestion on which this invention was wrought out to such a possibil- ity as now so deeply troubles all the millions between the two oceans, would be an instructive subject of inquiry to a .studious and useful historian. We see now, as we never saw before, the condition of things it may produce. We see that the candidate of either of the two great poli- tical parties of the country may have a majority of two or three hundred thousand votes, of as full and honest a representative character as any others cast, and yet that this great majority may be nullified by what in slang phrase might be called ajluke, or by the manipulation of 84 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. a ballot-box, or even by some unwitting informality or inadvertency in a small State or (Constituency. See what a small incident under the present system might render nugatory a majority of half a million votes and all the political power they represent. Suppose that the electoral vote of Florida, South Carolina, and Loui- siana ohould be declared for Hayes, or enough of it to pro- duce a tie between him and Tilden, while the latter had an unquestionable majority of two hundred thousand popular votes. This majority would be of no avail to him, but a slight informality — we will not say trick — in a small constituency might send him to the White House. For instance, perhaps through a mere inadvertency or non-criminal ignorance, the postmaster in a small village in Vermont or Oregon is appointed a Presidential elector, and his appointment is vitiated by the law that makes any Federal office-holder ineligible as an elector. Sup- pose the law neither provides nor authorizes any other course than to fill the vacancy thus made with one of the electoral candidates who had the largest number of votes next to the disqualified and deposed elector. Of course, the elector put in his place would be a Democrat. Or, changing the case, he would be a Republican. His one vote would constitute a majority in the electoral college. It would be, it is true, only a majority of one, but just as legal and inviolable as a majority of ten or one hundred. Now, is it not evident that cur present system of Presi- dential election may produce this anomaly in the most democratic country in the world? Just think of Tilden or Hayes, with the majority of half a million votes, wrig- gling into the Presidential chair solely through the mis- take of some village postmaster in Vermont or Oregon, or through the ignorance of those who voted for him as an elector ? Is this a fanciful possibility to ascribe to the present system ? No ; it is one of the realities of its working, now agitating the nation, and which must lead to a radical change in principle as well as practice. It NATIONAL QUESTIONS. 86 would seem impossible that, with our present experience of it before the country , any future President should be elected under the system. The question then comes up : What system should be substituted for the present, and yet retain the spirit and genius of our republican institutions ? In the first place, the rights and claims of democi'acy unknown to Greece or Rome, or modern republics in other countries and ages, must be recognised and protected. For democracy in America means something more than the right and power of one compact, consolidated people, like the French na- tion, to choose their own government by thinking and voting as a mass. We have a democracy of States, as well as of individuals, to respect and maintain in any system we may adopt for the election of our President. Now, writers and speakers of both our great political parties argue that we cannot elect a President by a popular vote of the whole mass of the nation, without over-riding the right and part of small States in the choice. It is on that branch of the question that I would submit a few reflec- tions. At the outset, then, we must all admit that our State-right system is a vital and distinctive faculty of American democracy, and distinguishes it from the de- mocracy of any European country. The people-power, which is the Anglo-Saxon for democracy, is in England ahead of ours already in its ability to change or direct the government. It may turn out an Administration in its second or first week of office, and put a new one in its place in a fortnight. Every British voter is at least the fifty-thousandth part of a member of Parliament ; while the American voter is hardly the one-hundred-thousandth part of a member of Congress. Thus, in no other country in the world can the will and opinion of the people so soon and effectually turn the helm of a government as in England, But that is the democracy or people-power of a consolidated nation, not the democracy of individual States, as well as of individual men acting as a mass. 86 CHIPS FBOM MANY BLOCKS. Our republic is a union of States, each, to a cei'tain speci- tled extent, a legislative republic in itself. It has a riglit and status as a distinct commonwealth, independent of the number of its population, whether it be a hundred thousand, or a million. More or less, North or South, East or West, they vote and act as a State in federal or national legislation. Can they be dissolved from this re- lation, and resolved into the great mass of the whole population of the Union, and vote with that mass for the President, without weakening the preiogative of the State to which they belong ? In this one election or poli- tical act, can all the votes in the Union be aggregated into one common stock of public opinion, and one vote count no more nor less than any other of the millions cast, without detracting anything from the local sover- eignty which the Constitution recognizes and protects in the smallest State in the republic ? That is the main question at issue. No one will dispute that the highest function or prero- gative of democracy is in the exercise of legislative power to make laws, municipal, state and national, by and for the people. Would the smallest State in the Union lose an iota of its legislative power by letting its population vote with the mass of the nation in the choice of Presi- dent ? Cei-tainly not ; for the President, with all the members of his cabinet chosen by himself, does not make laws. He and they merely execute the laws made by the people through the national legislature they alone create. A popular vote for the Presidency, then, would not touch in the slightest degree the legislative power of the small- est State in the Union. We shall find the proof of this fact if we look into the wheel-within-a-wheel of our sys- tem of local democracy. Take any one of our States , for instance. Here is a republican commonwealth complete in its organization. Its president is called a governor, and its cabinet a council. Great or small, the State is di- vided into districts, on the assumption that the people of NATIONAL gUKSTIONS. 87 each, however small, may have an interest and a mind of its own to be represented in the legislature. There is the nmnicipal or town district with its representative, who is elected to represent its special interest as well as its opin- ion on the general question of the State. Then there is the larger senatorial district, embracing several towns, that elects its member of the Upper House to the same duty and office. Next we have the Congressional dis- tricts, to represent the mind and interests of a large divi- sion of the State in the National Legislature, as well as to take part in the general business of Congress, because the fact is assumed and respected that one or two counties of a single State may have an opinion and interest of its own to be represented at Washington. Here we ha ve an illustration of the rights enjoyed by the local democracies of a State. Each votes by itself for its representative and senator in the State Legislature, and for its own member of Con- gress, That is, in matters of State or National Legisla- tion each local democracy retains and exercises its own full perogative of action. But when it comes to the elec- tion of a governor, who neither originates nor makes laws, they resolve themselves into the general mass of the people and elect him by popular vote, in which one man's ballot counts no more nor less than any other man's in the issue of the choice. Now, can any one say, with the slightest shadow of reason, that one of these local or divi- sional democracies yields an iota of its perogative by going into this election of the governor by a popular vote? Let us now go from this inside to "the outside wheel of our democratic system, and see if any State, however small, could lose an iota of its legislative power and dig- nity by going into the election of a .President by the pop- ular vote. Let us first look at the field of national legis- lation and the part such a State takes in it. Its laws are to affect the well-being of the whole Union. There are only two bodies authorized and able to make these laws: 88 CHIPS FltOM MANY BLOCKS. tho House of Roprescntativea and the Senate. One can- not make them witliout the other's concunence. Now, a small State may be entitled to only one member in the House, but it has always two members in the Senate, and without the Senate no act can become law. Thus the Senate Chamber stands athwart all legislation of the Lower House, and none of it which that chamber rejects can have authority or effect. Then, when all the national laws clothed with authority have passed through the Senate, not a judge of the Supreme Court or any Federal Court, to interpret or apply them, can be appointed without the scrutiny and approbation of that body. Thus the Senate is, as it were, the very body-guard of the Constitution and the laws of the nation. Its elective power reaches to every officer and position in the govern- ment except the President and Vice-President. Though the people by States elect these two officials, the Senate has a veto upon every cabinet officer, and without its con- sent no favourite of the President can fill a bureau of the government. Thus the Senate is the only legislative body or power in the nation that can lay its hand upon the Executive Department and determine its character. It is a matter of as great importance to the smallest as to the largest State, that the Union should be represented abroad by men who can maintain its dignity and rights near foreign governments. But the President cannot send a minister or consul to a foreign country without the concurrence and approbation of the Senate. Then what vast interests are involved in the treaty-making power, which governs our relations with other countries, and determines questions of peace or war, which touch to the quick the honour and well being of the nation ! The Senate lays its determining, shaping hand upon this great department of State also, and is the only legisla- tive body through which the people can reach it. Now, then, are not all the local democracies of the Union, however small, fully represented in all this concen- NATIONAL (QUESTIONS. 89 trie Icgi.slation ? Does not Rhode Island or Delawaiv have as much power tliroiin^h it at VVasliinotoR as New York or Pennsylvania, in plannin;^' the laws, fonninnf the b^xecutivc, the Judieiary, and foreign ministry of the government? If the senatorial power end)raees such a vast sweep of functions, is it not as clear as day that the small States have, and wield, Kfty per cent. mor(^ of that jiowei" than the largest States in the Union ? There are twenty-three States with an aggregate po])ulation of 10,- (S12,()()0, according to the census of 1870, and fifteen with ii total of 27,-295,000. Thus these 11,000,000, in round numbers, of the twenty-three States, have sixteen more senators than the 27,295,000 of the other fifteen ! Divid- ing this senatorial i)ower, Nevada e(pials New York and Colorado Pennsylvania. Do not these facts prove that no State, however small, would part with any democratic or legislativ(s power, if, in a single election, once in four years, its population were massed with the whole people of the Union in choosing tlie President by popular vote ? If no such loss could be sustained, then what stands in the way of adopting this only satisfactory system ? Sui'ely it cannot be a difficul- ty in arithmetic, for a presidential candidate would sel- dom receive more votes in a State than the candidate for its governor, and the votes he I'eceives are always satis- factorily counted and verified. But I will not enter upon that branch of the subject, as I only undertook to show that the change to a popular vote would no more detract from the democracy of States than from the democracy of individuals in a nation like France. F 90 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. THE TWIN DAUGHTERS OF THE HORSEIiEECH ; THEIR GREED AND CRY. Every nation in Christendom has two daughters of the Horseleech, War, at its jugular vein. The appetite of each for blood g^-ows by that it feeds upon. And as it grows, each cries more hungi^ily from day to day, " Give ! Give ! " And just in proportion as they suck a nation's blood does it give, and give them more and more of it. Some of these victimized nations are already bled till they are pale, weak and staggering with exhaustion. There is Italy, for example. In what should be the flower and prime of her youth as a united nation, she is losing so much blood that she can hardly walk or stand upright. The great goblin, Suspicion, like a winged dragon, to which the one John saw in the Apocalypse was a mere mosquito in size and sting, overshadows all these Christian powers, and screams in their affrighted ears, day and night " Give ! Give to the daughters of the Horseleech ! " And they are not disobedient to the voice of the Beast that blackens the air with its wings and fills it with its vulture screech. See how they give. Last year the twin daughters of the Horseleech, called Army and Navy, sucked, out of the veins of their life and labour, three thousand millions of dollars. This bleeding did, in very deed, draw exhaus- tively upon the very marrow and muscle of their being. It drew upon the sinews of humble and patient labour, upon every drop of sweat, upon every penny earned and every ounce of bread and meat brought into the dwell- ings of the poor. But these nations in Europe are all very near neigh- bours. One abuts upon the other in some cases for the whole length of its territory. So the great winged dragon, Suspicion, the Beast to which they give their power, cries to them all, ** Give ! Give to the daughters of the Horseleech ! for the nearer you are to each other as NATIONAL QUESTIONS. 91 neighbours the more you should suspect and hate each other as pirates or nighwaymen, ready to pounce upon you if off your guard." This comes from near neighbour- hood, according to tlie logic of the Beast. Cloye proxi- mity, it teaches, is the great danger of nations. Against this they must provide at any cost, nor grudge the blood they give to the twin daughters of the Horseleech. The logic is irresistible ; these neighbour nations of Europe listen to the voice of the Beast more obediently than to any voice God ever uttered to mankind. They take five millions of picked men from the plough, hammer, axe and spindle, and marshal them into standing armies to defend one from the other. That is all ; merely to resist an inva- sion which one, of course, is never to provoke by word, or deed, or disposition. How blessed this great continental nation of ours should be chat it is separated by three thousand miles of sea from our nearest neighbour power which we could fear ! How fortunate that we are free, by such a space from this fearful proximity which frightens European nations out of their propriety ! Surely the winged draofon that overshadows and affriirhtens them can not stretch its sable wing across the ocean to darken our sky. Pleasant but vain dream ! With all these iruarantees of nature, with all the broad defence of intervening distance, there is not a civilized or barbarous nation in the wide world that yields such cowardly, sei'vile obedience to the Beast, or feeds the appetite of the twin daughters of the Horseleech so rapidly as this American Union ! The simplest facts and figures prove the truth of this state- ment. Let us look at them. For fifty years, notwithstanding all the existing events and questions that troubled us within that period, no difhcultyhas "isen between us and any European nation which has not been peaceably and satisfactorily settled by direct negotiation or through the arbitrament of an impartial power. Ihe most burning question ever sub- 92 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. mitted to such arbitration was brought to the bar of the Geneva Tribunal by England and America in the sight of the admiring world, as the grandest homage ever paid to impartial justice. Both these great powers, as they stood before that great white throne of equity which they had erected, gave assurance in the act that no minor nor major difference between them should ever go to the bloody arbitrament of the sword to stain the bar of reason, religion and humanity which they there and then honoured, and honoured themselves, by their loyalty. The two powers that, by taking hold of hands, can bring their fingers together around the globe, appealed to the other nations, not only by the voice of their great example, but by express invitation, to bring their differences to the same tribunal for solution. Why, then, should the black dragon wing of Sjispicion deepen its shadow over our land in malicious mockery of Geneva ? Why should the twin daughters of the Horseleech suck at the jugular vein of this nation with a new greed, and cry for blood ? What is England going to do to us, or we to her, in the next fifty years, that we can not settle at the tribunal we have jointly erected ? Can any reasoning mind, in either country, imagine a more serious difficulty to arise, between the two than the Alabama question ? Can any question arise between us and France, or Germany, or Russia more incapable of pacific solution than that most irritating and complicated difficulty ? Are we going to put out of the Geneva court these powers should any serious controversy arise between tln^m and us ? Well, suppose we cowardly listen to the voice of the Beast, and say that the Geneva tribunal has lost its place and power in the world ; that we will not ask any nation in conflict with us to bring its contention before that court, or go to it again with any cause of our own. Let us say we will take the back track of brute force, and submit our rights, honour and interest hereafter only to the old arbitrament of the word. Let us obey the old , NATIONAL QUESTIONS. 98 eioak of Suspicion, and believe that all other nations are devoid of honour and all moral principle and sense of riglit ; that they are pirates or filibusters at heart, and as such we must be armed and on our guard against them. If we believe all this of them, we must concede to them the reasoning faculties and shrewdness of pirates or buccaneers. Well, then, ask ari}' military or naval auth- ority in Christendom if he believes it possible for any single power, or any two powers, of Europe to send across the ocean an army of fifty thousand men to attack us, with the munitions of war which they would need for a single battle on land ? Now, how can a reasoning mind indulge the preposterous fantasy that any European power or coalition would send a force of fifty thousand men to invade or attack this continental nation of forty millions, with its hundred railroads and telegraphs run- ning to the seaboard ? Just think of such an amazing folly ! It would seem almost as an insult to any man's reason to believe he would yield to such a wild fantasy. But perhaps one may say that even a force of fifty thousand men might attack one of our seaboard towns and destroy it, though they might not dare to march ten miles inland. That is, if they did not come for conquest of a single acre, they might come for revenge or retalia- tion. Then for what act on our part ? Does the voice of the Beast mean that we are to give the bluest veins of the nation to the daughters of the Horseleech to guard us against retaliation for injuries or insults we may perpe- trate on other powers ? Is that the meaning of our forts and arsenals, and squadrons of iron-clads ? Now, then, in view of all these natural and moral exemptions and defences from the danger of a foreign war, have I said what is not demonstrably true, that no civilized or barbarous nation in the world yields such cowardly obedience to the Beast, Suspicion, as this proud and powerful republic of our love and pride ? It is a hard saying if true, and the truth might be better con- 94 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. cealed than revealed, some one may say. But has not the truth been concealed long enough, or is not the conscience or the courage of the nation yet strong enough to bear it ? Can we not, by this time, look a few facts and figures in the face ? these, for instance, just submitted to the country by the secretary of the treasury — the official who has to attend to the feeding of the two daughters of the Horseleech, just as the attendants of a menagerie of wild beasts give to the hyenas their food in due season. Look at these figures : Army, 1873 $46,325,.308 "■ 1874 42,313,927 $•88,639,235 Navy, 1873 826,2.54,155 '• 1874 30,932,-587 ,-; • : , $.57,186,742 Her3 is the sucking of the two daughters of the Horse- leech for two years: $1 45,825,977. The last ten years have been years of peace, except with several Indian tribes. What practical service has been rendered to the nation for this vast expenditure ? Captain Jack and his Modocs have been subdued, more than a hundred other Indians killed and their wigwams burnt, and an over- thrown government in Louisiana has been restored by federal troops. This is all the army has done for us in the last two years. This kind of work is all we may expect it to do in years to come. Now, as every fighting or roaming Indian within the circumfer- ence of the Union costs us at least $1,000 a year for fighting or watching him, would it not be good policy to give the Dominion of Canada that sum per head for taking them all into its territory and governing and caring for them in its old-fashioned way ? Indians within its orders never go out on the war-path. They do not cost Canada anything for keeping them in order — that is, nothing in the powder and ball line. She has NATIONAL QUESTIONS. &5 always had a simple way of her own in dealing with Indians which our government has never learned. Now, if she would only take over to her all our fighting or " non-adscripti " Indians, at the rate of a thousand dollars per head, she would save us $10,000,000 yearly, and we could reduce the distension of one of the daughters of the Horseleech very considerably. But if the army has done so much work among the Indians for us in the last two years, what, let me ask in all sincerity and good faith, has the navy accomplished during that period ? What is it to do in peace or war ? It is not to fight the Indians between the Mississippi and the Rocky mountains. That is clear and certain. All honour to that ship that is taking soundings across the Pacilic for a telegraph, and to any other ship employed in scientific discovery. But are any of our war-ships built and manned to chase and drive pirates from our seas ? Has any one read of such an exploit or attempt on their part for th^e last ten years ? Are they to be sea-going tribunals around the world to administer American justice of the Corean order to guilty or suspected offenders, or to any copper-coloured islander who shall bite his thumb at our national flag ? Then, are the captains of these ships the judges, and the marines the juries that are to decide nice questions of international law, to render and execute verdicts with the swift rapidity of drum-head justice ? See how one of these ships vindicated the nation's honour and defended its rights, and elevated the respect of the world for its high moral tone in the case of the Virginius which was driven by a Spanish corvette into a South American port under the protection of our American man-of-war. Every officer, sailor and marine on board that ship knew that the Virginins was a filibuster, try- ing to I'un arms and ammunition into Cuba against the Spanish government. Every reading man in the Union knew this. The Spanish captain had ample proofs of it, he insisted, and he almost begged the American com- 96 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. iiiander to conduct the Virginian back to an American poit, where he might bring his proof before an American court. He pledged his government to pay all damages assessed for detention ii his evidence should fail to convict the Virginius of its character and crime. But no. Not so had the American captain learned the duty attaching to his position as a defender of his country's justice and honour. He protected the filibuster, and let her escape to commit the crime she meditated, and to involve the two nations in the peril of war. Then how the other daughter of the Horseleech cried, " Give ! Give!" and how obediently the cry was responded to ! Here is the eager answer to it, in dry, official language : " The most important operations of the bu-eau occurred during November and December of last year on the occasion of the seizure of the Virginius by a vessel of war of the Spanish navy. It was thought advisable to immediately arm and equip every available ship in the navy then in the ports oi the United States. 1 he complete and rapid armament of so many ships, including iron-clads and the largest frigates, although a heavy task, was nevertheless successfully performed without the omission of a single important detail." Thus, with the best or sufficient reason to believe the Virginius was an outlawed buccaneer or filibuster, with all the uncertainties in regard to her capture ; without waiting for the mind and decision of Spain in regard to the case ; without a thought of Geneva and its tribunal, the naval daughter of the Horseleech was pressed closer to the neck of the nation. Indeed it was unable to gorge all the blood offered it. The report says $27,147,857 were voted, but the navy only sucked of it $26,254,155. Now, if the American war vessel had led the Virginius back to be tried at an American court, as solicited by the Spanish captain, all this extra blood would have been saved. What, then, is the design and use of the navy in peace ? And what would be its use in war if our own acts p.nd those of another nation should provoke one 'i Is not our continent large enough to fight on, that we must annex both oceans for additional battle grounds ? Sup- NATIONAL QUESTIONS. 97 pose tlie war were with England. Can any one believe that (she would think of sending' a fleet of iron-cladj^ to blaekade one or two of our ports or all of them to prevent American cotton and corn from getting out to Liverpool ? Certainly she would not attempt to land any of her troops in face of a million of armed men that she might expect to confront them. Then, are our war-ships intended to be mere mobilized forts to supplement our fortifications ? If so, would it not be cheaper and more effective to double the number of land-forts ? What other uses have they in war than to fight single duels with the enemy's ships on the sea ? Would they destroy English commerce on the Atlantic ? Who are the joint- owners of that commerce, and which would be most injured by its destruction ? Can the great West and South afford to be bled at this rate for the mere possi- bility that their commerce with Europe may be annihi- lated by our navy in some future war with England or France ? I have said that no civilized or barbarous nation in the world stimulates and feeds the appetite of the twin daughters of the Horseleech so rapidly as our own. A few figures prove the truth of this hard statement : Ai-my and Navy for two years. 1820-1821 $19,042,865 1830-1831 20,791,540 1850-1851 ;«,655,408 1873-1874 145,825,977 There ! Can any other nation, civilized or barbarous, show such a growth of appetite and its feeding in the two daughters of the Horseleech as that ? Is it not about time for this tax-laden nation to awake to a sense of this steadily increasing blood-letting ? Look at it. The in- terest of what the navy gorged in 1873, at 7 per cent., is more than all the Christian churches in America gave for the preaching of the gospel to the heathen world that year. And this process is to go on, gi'owing with the 98 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. growth of the nation. John Bright, referring to the system in the House of Commons, spoke of a man who was so crazed by a growing wen on his head, that at last he came to regard the wen as his head and his head as the wen, and to treat them accordingly. So it seems as if our country were becoming subject to the same hallu- cination — to regard the twin daughters of the Horseleech clinging to its veins as vital parts of its own life and being. In face of the growing civilization of the age ; in face of the best humanities of reason and religion ; in the face of the august bar of equity it erected with England at Geneva, it goes on fostering the wen on its head with more and more faith in it as a vital organ of its system. See how it fondles it for the next year with the promise to the army and navy of $60,500,000. Well may every American Christian and patriot ask, " Shall the sword devour forever," not only in war but in peace ? THE WARDS OF THE NATION—THEIR DEBT AND DUE. If any human being in this world could properly adopt and utter the words of the Roman captain to Paul, " With a great sum obtained I this freedom," it is the freedman of this nation. Unlike the Roman, he did not obtain his freedom with a great sum of his own money, but with the great sum of his own wrongs. There was a critical period, when the nation left the outside world in doubt whether all its rivers of precious blood and millions of money added to the overbalancing wrongs of the slave, were to obtain for him this freedom. In all the years of the American re])ublic, it never stood at such another crisis point before the world ; and the world held its breath of sympathy until the vital question should be NATIONAL QUESTIONS. 00 decided, whether the great struggle were merely to link the sundered States of" the Union together with " blood and iron," wliile the fetters of the slave were left un- severed. For many months, even for more than half this bloody period of our history, this momentous question was left in perilous doubt. Even now, neither the outside world, nor we ourselves, can say, with full assurance of faith, how this question would have been decided, if the war liad only lasted a year. But the decision is an ac- complished and everlasting fact. The whole civilized world has accepted it as such, without questioning whe- ther moral motives, or military necessities, weighed most in the balance of the deed. No intelligent man, North or South, can deny, or doubt, that slavery was the single and only cause of the war. It ought to be equally clear and certain that the extinc- tion of slavery was the price we paid for the Union. It is too late now for any one to say we intended, or were willing, to purchase the Union at a less price. So the freedom now conferred on the emancipated millions in the South was " obtained with a great sum ; " including . direct and collateral cost, a sum of nine thousand millions of dollars. But this great sum does not pay the debt due them, and due to the country through them. We owe it to the entire nation, as well as to them, to make their costly freedom an element of prosperity to the great com- monwealth of the Union. We have given them votes in number sufficient to shape the legislation of the States in which they live. As Robert Lowe said, after the i)assage of the last Reform Bill in the British Parliament, we owe it t(^ those States and all the rest, " to educate our masters." The severest imprecation of David upon his enemies was uttered in the words ; " Set thou a fool to reign over them." He must have known from personal observation that such a I'ule was the most degi-ading and ruinous punishment that could be inflicted upon a country, because it ^^mavscu- lated the manhood of the people, debased their moral 100 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. Hen-sibilitieK, and made them not only tit victim.s, but fit inHtruments, of (general eorruption. The nation is now getting a somewhat clear perception, if not positive ex- ])erience, in some of our Southern States, of what David meant when he invoked such a curse on his worst enemies. And, on the whole, one cannou truly say that it is un- mindful of its duty " to educate our masters " in the South, and to fit them for the intelligent exercise of the grea^ right of sutirage. The institutions and efforts to impart this education to them, prove that the nation is conscious of what it owes to them, to the South, and to the well being of the entire Union. But there is an education of most vital importance to the freedmen of the South which they cannot obtain in public schools, mixed or unmixed. It is that branch of education that guides and upholds the first footsteps of human hope, life and labour ; that makes a man think of the morrow and try to make it a little better than to-day ; that leads him to forego a present enjoyment of rest, and even of food and raiment, in order to make some dim and distant future a little more restful, sunny and happy. The working force of hope is the greatest that operates on the human mind, both in regard to this life and the life to come. It is truly the great industrial, moral and spiritual power of the future, for it makes the unseen future a pre- sent and vivid reality. It thinks, feels and works for the future. More than half the thought, anxiety, labour, the toiling and moiling of civilized mankind, is for the future. In the life of every man there is the rainy day, the weak day, for which he nmst provide. But in the brighter visions of hope, there are days which he can make happier than any he has seen, by rising early and toiling late, and by eating the bread of carefulness, and very sparingly of that, for a few of the next years. Then he will labour and save, and stint himself of many enjoy- ments, in order to make a better future for his children than the hard present his father bequeathed to him. NATIONAL QUESTIONS. 101 Now it was easier for the slave to ac(|uirc by stealth " the three R's" of a rudimental education, than to grasp and work tliis vital force (tf hope to the iinprovetnent of his earthly condition. He had no future to laboiir or care for. His master was to look to all that, and to pi o vide for the rainy days, and last days of his life. He could eai'M or own nothing to make those da3^s more comfortable. Tlie present was all he had. There was no future blotter tlian to-day which his hope could reach. 80, with all l)(!iiigs shorn of a hopeful future, hardly anything better in this world was left him to say tlian " Let us eat and (hiuk, for to-morrow we die." This sentiment and con- dition had been the inheritance of several generations of slaves, until the one just emancipated were born to it as a second nature. This, then, is one of the first and great- est debts we owe them — to give them the full working power of hope ; to break down the barrier that has sev- ered them fi'om the possibilities of the future; to enlighten and encourage their minds to these possibilities ; to show how these may be mastered, one by one, by patient in- dustry and frugality ; by saving a penny, and by earning an extra one to-day, both to be laid by for tiiat future which is to be solely their own, and not a master's, nor the nation's to provide for. Well, notwithstanding these millions of freedmen have been so recently admitted to the universal suffrage of hope, they have surprised us all with their readiness and ability to learn and practice its first lessons. The possi- bility of a better to-morrow than to-day, came to them in the first revelations of their changed condition ; and thousands upon thousands of them began to earn and save for the morrow. They were encouraged to earn and save, as they believed, by the whole nation. They had had some notion of what the Freedmen's Bureau was at Washington. Probably, ninety-nine in a hundred of them thought it was a great chest-of-drawers filled with good things for them by the Government. Surely the 102 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. goveinment owned the chest, held the key and unlocked the drawers for them. So it did. They were right. Then came the Freed men's Savings Bank at Washington, close to the President's own house. Did not the Government own that too ? Did it not hold in its great, strong hand every cent dropt into it by any negro man, women or child rescued from slavery ? Did they not all have good rea- son to believe this ? Did not nineteen in twenty of Euro- pean money-men have good reason to believe it ? Cer- tainly. What honest-minded men at home or abroad, could suspect that one of the old dodges of financial rascality was to be perpetrated on these unsuspecting victims of their hope and trust in the good faith of the nation ? How could one of them think for a moment that, when he carried the pennies he had earned and saved to the bank, he was not dropping them into the strong, trusty hand of the Government, but into the greedy palm of a ring of corrupt and irresponsible speculators at Washington ? Not one of these infamously abused vic- tims had the slightest shadow of a reason to suspect that the palm outstretched to receive his pennies was not the nation's hand. The nation, through every responsible representative of its honour, faith and power, knew that he trusted his little all to that hand. Now, then, before a just God, and all honourable men, the nation owes it to these swindled victims of their own faith in its honour to pay back to them, out of the public treasury, with fair and honest interest, every cent they deposited in the Freedman's Savings' Bank at Washing- ton. We owe it to them as a debt of pure justice and honour. We owe it to them as a debt due to the entire nation which has expended so man}* millions for them, through the Freedman's Bureau, to set them on their feet on the highroad of freedom. All these millions expended in their behalf, were the nation's investment in their self- standing, self-supporting and self -going citizenship. These patient earnings and savings they put with such trust NATIONAL QUESTIONS. 103 into the Government's hand, as they believed, were the interest they paid the nation on that investment — the first fruits of their free manhood, the first proofs that they knew what real manhood meant, and might do and be. The cruel villainy that has swindled them out of these hard savings, has defrauded the nation of the in- terest on all the millions it has invested in the recon- struction of the slave into tlie stature and status of a freeman. Nor is this all, nor the worst. Not only all the victimized thousands of these depositors, but all the more numerous thousands who might have been encouraged to save and deposit under a regime of truth and honour, have lost something more valuable and costly than money. They have lost faith in the Government ; for it stood by in silence, and saw a thief's hand, wearing its own signet ring, stretched out to its ignorant and unsuspecting wards, clutching their earnings and spending them in the riotous living of ring speculation. This, then, is the immediate and imperative debt of the nation to these cruelly-cheated wards : First, to pay back to them every dollar of their dej)osits. N ext, to strike down every thief s hand that plots for their trust, and to hold out its own for their savings, with the sacred honour of the Government pledged for their safe keeping and redemption. Next to the Almighty's hand in trust, jus- tice, honour and power, should be the hand of the Amer- ican Union to these millions of freedmen in these their tirst feeble steps on the high road of citizenship. It has cost us millions to be generous to them. It will cost us nothing to be just to them, and justice alone will secure to the nation the best fruits of its generosity, 104 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. THE GOVERNMENT'S DEBT TO LAND AND LABOUR. Nature has also a political economy founded on revealed and eternal laws, which neitlier monarchies nor republics can violate with impunity. " What God has joined toge- ther let no man put asunder," is an injunction of wider sweep than the intimate relationships of human society. The law that joins together man and woman in conjugal life rests on the same basis of necessity as the law that joins together labour and land. In the first days of the creation these were so intimately united in the motive of its very existence, that the only reason then revealed for making man was that he should subdue and till the earth, which was formed and fitted for that express purpose. The two cannot be put asunder by any human policy without incurring the consequences of a violated law in loss and suftering. Nor can they be kept asunder, or their union be prevented, without the penalty that follows the sin of omission. Whoever travels over the wild or thinly -peopled regions of the earth will see what comes of keeping asunder labour and land. And on no other con- tinent can this deplorable consequence be more strikingly seen than on the public domain of this country. There is no other country in the world where so much labour and so much land are kept asunder as in the United States. And millions upon millions of our people are deeply feeling the penalty of this violation of the law of God and nature. Until our Government does works meet for repentance of the infraction of this law, no politi- cal or financial reform can lift the nation out of the bog of its present condition. It is in vain for us to expect this condition will emerge to the hard footing and happy sunlight of permanent prosperity unless the Government puts its shoulder to the wheel in a strong, bold measure ; unless it ceases to hold asunder what God and nature have joined together, or the best labour and the best land NATIONAL QUESTIONS. 105 ever given to a nation. Hunger has sharp teeth, and will not only " eat through stone wallp,," but something harder sfcill. It has more than once eaten through the procus- tean adamant cJ a political ec3iiomy which science had claimed should never yield to the sudden or abnormal necessities of humanity. The basest things of the world upset this heartless code, and broi.e its Mede-and-Persian hasps. The potato did it. That homely and rusty veget- able withdrew its supply of food for a single season, and a nation of 5,000,000 was reduced to sore distress. The regulation type of political economy, that leaves all such emergencies to be met by the spontaneous law of demand and supply, was powerless and unheeded in face of the terrible necessity. The English Government voted 5:?40,000,00O for the relief of famine-stricken Ireland. But how was this relief to be administered ? Thi-ough work- houses and poor-houses ? No, but as wages for labour. In spite of the revered decalogue of political economy the State had to furnish laboui* for the starving thousands and pay them every night for their work. See what has happened in this appalling Indian famine, which will cost the Government $300,000,000, besides an amount of indi- vidual contributions unparalleled in the history of the world. How are these millions of Government money dispensed to the sufferers ? As wages for employment })rovided by the State. The claims of labour to sustenance by the sweat of its brow had to be recognized and satisfied by the State, in spite of all the theories of a political economy that would leave labour to take care of itself under all possible conditions. If the rights, interests and claims of labour ought to be sacred in the eyes of any human Government, that should be the Government of this country. We shall not be exposed to a potato famine, a cotton famine, or an Indian rice famine. But it seems a sin against nature even that we should have this labour famine upon hundreds of thou- sands of able-bodied men on the verge of starvation, with G 106 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. half a continent unpeopled and uncultivated belonging to the Nation. We may depend upon it that the teeth of hunger in this country are as sharp as in Ireland or India. They will eat through the walls of that political economy which our National Government and State Governments have made so impregnable to labour, and so yielding to capital. Up to the present, both these legislative powers have talked and acted as if they were yielding to a dangerous heresy to loan labour a dollar or provide for it employment, even for the public good. Where it has asked bread, or a chance to earn it, they have given it a stone. But to incorporated capital it has said : " Seek and you shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened to you." And it has sought and knocked, and the Treasury of the Nation and its vast landed estate have been opened wide to satisfy its unscrupulous greed. One hundred and twenty millions of the choicest acres of our public domain have been given to the Pacific railways, and millions upon millions of dollars, in the form of guaranteed bonds, which they are unable or unwilling to pay, either princi- pal or interest. How remarkable that a Government that pretends to any honest perception of justice should have two such opposite codes of economy, one for capital, the other for labour. The condition we now deplore will become permanent or periodical unless our Government returns to first prin- ciples, or to the policy which our colonial Legislatures adopted in the early settlement of the country. They did not leave labour and land to drift together by accident. When the four-town Colony of Connecticut granted a township's space of wild land to a company of fifty or sixty proprietors, it was with the express condition that every one of them should build a house upon his allotment, of a prescribed size, and occupy it himself, or provide it with a bona fide tenant within four years or forfeit his holding. What God and nature had joined together, the colony determined should not be kept asunder by specu- NATIONAL QUESTICHiS. 107 Intivo capital. Had our National Govcinnient adopted this principle and policy in regard to its vast grants of tlu' public domain to railway companies, we should never have witnessed these gorges of unemployed labour at all ill tlie manufacturing cities of the country. It is impossible to mobilize these myriads of impoverished men waiting tbi- ciiiployment by offering them a homestead of wild land hevoiul the Mississippi. It is offering then, a stone when they ask for bread. It is inviting a wounded man bound to a tree to run for his life. But a new opportunity and motive may now be urged upon our Govei-nment to make a virtue of necessity and rectify this mistake. These Pacific railways are owing it vast sums of money and still asking for more land and guaranteed bonds. They will never pay up these arrearages without some compo- sition that shall lighten their heavy totals. Here, then, is a form of composition which both they and the Govern- ment ought and can afford to accept : Let these railway companies plant settlements of a hundred families each on the lands granted them near their lines. Let these, or something like them, be the terms of settlement. For every family or householder they shall convey from the over-crowded centres of labour in the Eastern and middle States and plant on their domain, they shall be credited ^1,000 on their account with the Government. Every settler shall be allotted 100 acres of land for his homestead, for which $400 shall be allowed the company. The $000 to be advanced might be thus divided : $300 for the best house of logs or wea- ther-boards which that amount would build ; a horse, harness, cart, plough and smaller farming tools, $200 ; l)r()visions, $50 : transporting family and their household effects, $50. Thus, for a settlement of 100 families, the railway company w^ould receive a credit of $40,000 for 10,000 acres of land sold back to the Goverment at $4 per acre. Then it would be allowed $5,000 for conveying the settlers to their location. Besides this, the transportation of 108 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. building matcriaLs, stock, provisions, etc., might be rec- koned in as some pi'ofit to the company. Every settle- ment of 100 families would, therefore, cost the Government $1()(),00() and the company $50,000, in money and $50,000 in land, transportation, etc. These " plantations," as the old colonists called them, if gradually located within twenty-five miles of each other, would enhance the value and demand of every acre between them, and thus reim burse to the Government and the conipan}'^ what they cost. . They would make paying local business for the railways near which they were located, and constantly increasing sources of revenue to the National Treasury. They would give to the cold and barren poverty of un- peopled regions the warmth and wealth of permanent and coherent populations. They would make a wilderness, lying in costly silence and idleness, " to blossom as the rose." They would fill it with the merry music of Sabbath bells and of human industry. Nature, itself, would sing for joy at the bans of labour and land, so long kej)t asunder by a policy opposed to the fundamental laws and motives of the creation. Such is one way, at least, of paying the old debts of the Pacific Railway Companies, which I would most earnestly commend to the thoughtful consideration of all patriotic minds that are dwelling with anxious solicitude upon the present and prospective conditions of the labour- ing classes in this country. WANT OF PUBLIC SPECIALTY MEN. At the beginning of our second century as a nation, we find the distinctive evils and dangerous customs and classes of older countries confronting us. We have already nearly as many organizations as England in NATIONAL QUESTIONS. 109 action to suppress or check these evils. Our benevolent associations almost equal in number those in that coun- try. But we as yet lack public men, of great power and influential position, who are ready to concentrate all the energies of their moral and intellectual force upon some special field of reform as the mission of their life and labour. In fact, now that slavery is dead, the only two specialtj'-men that are giving themselves each to a specific work, are Henry Bergh and Anthony Comstock. Neither is a man in pulDlic life, oi member of Congress or of a State legislature. But each has shown what a man in private life can do who brings a great heart of hope and faith to a cause, and makes it his mission with an enthu- siastic devotion that never cools nor tires before obloquy and opposition. If such men do not stand at the foun- tain-head of legislation themselves, they reach and move tliose who do, and who can clothe their efforts with the authority and power of law. Nor is the work of Bergh or Comstock localized and confined within the limits of a State. Without the help of Congress, their work is making its influence felt over the w^hole naiion. It may be said, with as much reason as many moral and philo- sophical facts can claim, that every horse, dog and cat between the two oceans has had its very being, rights and relations raised to a higher appreciation by the work of Mr. Bergh and the society of which he is the founder and undaunted champion. See what Anthony Comstock is doing, and what was to be done before he began to detect and arrest the skulking miscreants of corruption who were secretly dropping their leprous distillment into the head-springs of youthful life and public morality. But, although we have so niany fields of effort for re- forms of great exigency and importance open and calling for specific labourers, there is no public man of command- ing influence that has thrown himself into one of them with the earnestness which ensures success. We have had no member of Congress labouring for a reform with 110 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. the impcrtiir]»able and hopeful patienco of Henry Berke- ley, who brought his aniuui] motion into Parlianuint for voting by ballot during the space of nearly thirty con- secutive years. We have had complaints from various fields of labou]' against too many hours of toil and too early years of youthful life tied to the factory loom and spindle, but we have never had a Lord Shaftesbury to throw himself into the gap to unyoke almost infant ago from untimely drudgery and to lighten the burden put upon the peeled shoulders of older men and women. We have had increasing out-breaks of civil war, barring bloodshed, between labour and capital, on railroads, at the mouths of coal mines, and the doors of factories, but no American Mundella has been found to negotiate peace and equity between the two hostile parties. It is doubt- ful if any other sailors in the world are subjected to such cruel treatment as those that sail under the American flag. Nor is it doubtful if any country sends out more unseaworthy or overladen vessels to the perils of the ocean than the United States. But as yet no American Plimsoll has espoused the cause of the sailor, and made the walls of Congress ring with his wrongs. We have been wearied and sickened for years with the exasperating rascalities perpetrated upon the Indians, provoking them to hostilities that ended in their destruction. But, with two hundred years of the sad history of their race to inspire sympathy, no American Las Casas, nor William Penn, has arisen in Congress to be the champion of their cause. Even in the department of political and financial economy, which belongs to the province of national legis- lation, no public specialty -man has taken a commanding and recognized position in Congress. It is probable that there are as many free-traders in the United States as there were in England forty years ago. But no Cobden has yet arisen to advocate that policy with a clearness and force of argument which the most irreconcilable NATIONAL QUESTIONS. Ill restrictionist could not resist. So it is with other great refonriH which the progress of an enlightened civilization demands. They lack specialty-men in public life to give to them that concentration of heart and mind and those faculties of influence which Cobden gave to the great movement identified with his name. There were never HO many varied fields of specific labour open to men who would make and leave their mark upon their age and country as at the present day. There was never a time when a generous etibrt in one of these fields would be more highly appreciated, or win a quicker success, or a richer reward of public esteem. Every year some new department of labour for the ])ublic good calls for a leader of the Cobden or John Hovvai'd order of spirit and pur- pose. Here, foi' instance, is the Chinese immigration question, assuming such wide proportions and aspects of interest to the whole country. What a field this opens to a patriotic statesman ! If such a man wants one for the best capacities of his intellect, for the best aspirations of his patriotism, and the best impulses of a great-hearted ambition to be a recognized benefactor of two vast conti- nents, here is a grand opportunity to realize all these results to himself and to the world. We may hope that another Congress will develop public men to be to many of these great questions what Shaftesbury, Cobden, Blight, and Mundella, are to reforms of like importance ia England. . . CHArXEII IV. ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. UTILIZING WASTE MATERIAL. UTILIZINC, WASTE MATERTAI -I'TILIZTNG WASTE POPULATION— OUR NEED OF THE ENOLIHH WORKHOUSE— NECESSITY OF REPEOPLINO NEW ENGLAND — THE FETTERED LABOURER— THE FALSE LIGHTS OP GREAT NAMES— THE CONTAGIOUS DEMORALIZATION OP SHODDY MONEY. O one can travel far on this continent, or any other, without being impressed with the vast spaces void of human or intelligent beings to people, subdue, cultivate, and enjoy them. They look like sections con- denmed to exile and solitude, not for any crime of climate or soil, or for unfitness for human habitation. Thoy aie virtually a dead loss to the world in their present condi- tion, and will continue to be so until they are utilized by human life and labour. They are as yet the waste mate- rial of Nature. Then any observant visitor of the large cities and centres of population in this and other countries must be struck with the waste material of humanity they contain, or the thousands living " on the ragged edge " of crime, and the thousands dragged into it by poverty, igno- rance, and misery, and who are a dead weight upon society. Then there are hundreds of able-bodied men shut up for life in prisons for crimes that once would have carried them to the gallows. Here, then, are the waste materials of Na- ture and humanity waiting to be utilized for the good of the world as well as their own. Can it be done with such a result ? Can even the most criminal and degraded class be turned to a good account and made useful to the ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 113 cDuntry which they now burden with Huch trouble and expense ( Has any country tried an experiment in this direction which has succeeded ( Yes ; England has done it without ex})ecting any such result. Early in the cen- tuiy she shippiul oft' her worst criminals to Botany Bay, tliinkin<,'and intending that they should never trouble her agair. They were worse than worthless to their own country, and dou})tless would have grown worse still had they remained there. But they and their descendants foi'nied the nucleus of the great English-speaking nation of Australia. They became to it what the " F. F. V.'s " claimed to be to Virginia, or, " the first families" of the country. She has men and women enough to-day shut up in her prisons to form several little colonies with a like result in the waste places of Nature, where their descen- dants might rise to the status of an enlightened common- wealth. For instance, suppose she should plant a portion of this waste material of her society near one of the lately-discovered lakes of Central Africa. How soon might not such a penal settlement become the voluntary inhabi- tants of a region which their labour had made to blossom as the rose ! And what a centre of civilization such a connnunity might become to the continent in a single generation ! It is interesting to see the result of bringing these waste materials of Nature and humanity into mutual action and reaction upon each other. I once saw an illustration of this principle and economy on that wild, weird mountain desert, Dartmoor, which, large enough for a county, has only the penal establishment on it which Americans and French have a painful reason to remember. It is situated about midway in this cold, silent, misty wild, where few birds have the heart to build their nests or sing their songs. The earth that so chills the sk}'' overhead may be seen here and there between the gray boulders, bat is seemingly too poor to grow anything but moss and stinted shrubs. If any one would see an almost entire work of 114 CniPS FROM MANY DLOCKS. cniation \)y Imniaii hamls, hv may find a ^ood Hpeciiueii at this penal settlement. For, yeai" after year, tlu^se pri.soner.s have been led out to this creative work on the Kavage acre.s around them. With i)er8istent and laborious search, they have found earth under the rou^h pavement of granitic boutders. Th(!se they liave blasted or wrenched out of their deep beds and formed into walls of prodigious thickfiess around the fi(jlds tlu^y have thus practically created for luxurious production. Looking at these fields, green or golden with various ci'ops of vegetation, and comparing them with the face of the country around tliem, one may see how the waste and worst materials of Nature and humanity may be utilized for their mutual good. Now, few civilized countries have so umch waste mate- rial of Nature and humanity to V)e utilized as the United States. Take the Indians of different tribes and sections, for example. Ever since the first European settlement of the continent they have not only l)een suti'ered, but almost forced, to I'un to waste. To keep or allow tliem to ^ remaii in their savage state has cost the country several hundred millions of dollars. Duiing the Seminole war in Florida, it was estimated that every Indian killed or cap- tured cost $60,000. The expense of killing the Modocs, Sioux, and other Indians, per head, must have eciualled the price of one hundred acres of good farming land, with a comfortable house, a barn, a pair of team-hoi'ses, or mules, and half-a-dozen cows. If every Indian killed by our soldiery had instead been utilized by such an outfit for civilized life, what a reproductive investment it would have been for the nation at large ! But in spite of our forces now in the field against them, there are thousands of Indians between the Mississippi and the Rocky Moun- tains still remaining, and land enough within the same space for a thousand times their number to be utilized. Both, in their present condition, represent the waste material of humanity and Nature. How can they be brought to- ECONOMKUL AND INDUSTRIAL. I IT) f,'cthor to act and react upon each otluT foi- thoir nuitnal Id'Hctit and tlio general ^^jod of tlie country ! The first c;on«lition to this possibility nnist be considered and per- ibnnedat the outset. To utilize the Indian for civilized lif(%he must l)e recon- structed not only civilly but physically. He must not only be elevated to a new civil status within the pale of our general government, but he must MC([uire a new physical constitution to tit him for the full exercise and ''njoy- ment of that status. And this physical change nuist bo effected by intermediate stages or pi'ocesses, covering the space of two or three genei'ationti For the truth of the French proverb is illustrated in his condition. If Provi- dence proportions the wool of the sheej) to the force of the wind, it has proportioned the nmscular system of the Indian to his hereditary occupation or condition. His apparent mission, or raison d'etre, like that of the aboriginals of all the continents, has been to keep down beasts of prey for a future race of civilized inhabitants. Fnmi the first he has been a hunter, and his physical structure has been built for running, like the greyhound, and not for bending to hard, continuous labour in tilling land. If any one is curious to prove this physical con- formation to an hereditary occupation, let him compare the nmscular system of a Sioux or Modoc with that of the Cherokee or Chickasaw farmer of the Indian Terri- tory, who has been physically reconstructed in two or thi'ee generations by the very nature of the labour he fol- lows for life and livelihood. Now, to reconstruct the wild Indian hunter for an agriculturist, he must be brought to this transformation hy an intermediate pro- cess. The change is too great for his physical constitu- tion to effect at one step, or even in one generation. He must first be trained in one of easy preliminaries of agri- culture life, which will involve no very sudden and radical change in his muscular faculties and habits. He must become a herdsman, who is half-way between the 116 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. hunter and farmer. Instead of chasing herds of buffalo for their skins, he must lead forth into the wide pastures of Nature herds of cattle and sheep for beef, milk, and wool for his own family and for the market. This occu- pation will afford him scope and play for the greyhound conformation of his muscular svstem. To follow it he must have a fixed habitation as another condition of civilized life. Then he must own land for a homestead, and some of this he must be taught, helped, and stimu- lated to till with his own hands ; and this brings us to the part the general Government should take in utilizing his life for his own and the common good. Looking back over the past fifty j'^ears, and estimating how much the policy of the sword has cost the nation in dealing with the Indians, surely we have small reason to haggle over the few thousands of dollars which we should have to expend on the policy of the ploughshare in bringing them within the pale of American civilization and citizenship. In thus utilizing and citizejiizing them, we can well afford to adopt the generous economy of the province of New Brunswick in the encouragement its government extends to emigrants from Europe to set- tle in that country. It offers each and every settler land for a good-sized farm, it builds a comfortable house on it, clears and ploughs six acres near it, furnishes him farm- ing tools, seeds and provisions for six months — all of which he is to pay for gradually in labour on the roads nearest him, and which he most needs. Thus, on his arrival at Halifax or St. John, he may leave the same day for the new home a'-eady prepared and waiting for him. This is all very generous, but how is it to pay the provisional government and people ? one may ask. It pays in the value of a new and permanent population, increas- ing not only the labour and production of the province, but its consumption of home produced and imported arti- cles, thus contributing lai'gely to the public revenue. Now, then, would it not be a paying policy for our Gov- ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 117 ernment to do the same, or as much, for the wild and roaming Indian, in order to introduce him into the primary condition of civilized life? It will not cost so nmch labour to locate and settle him down to a useful occupation as it does to plant a Scandinavian peasant on a wooded homestead in New Brunswick. To clear off timber and plough the six acres for him requii-es much time and labour. But to build a comfortable cottage or cabin for the Indian, to break up six acres of prairie land and sow it with wheat or plant it with corn, could be done more easily and cheaply. And an outfit of farming tools and provisions for six months, and the expense of an agricultural agent to supervise the settlement, would be the veriest trifle compared with the present cost of the military or sword policy. Then, if it were thought too costly for the Government to give a certain number of cows and sheep outright to the Indians, to start them in the new life of herdsmen or stock-raisers, these might be let to them for a certain percentage of their increase, after a system well known to farmers in old as well as new countries. In a word, it only needs a will to find a way for gathering up the scattered remnants of the wild Indian tribes, and for planting them in fixed cities of habitations or in well-regulated and useful communi ties, and on the footing of citizens, amenable only to our laws, and entitled to their protection. Thus we might say to them and of them what Earl Dufferin said, in the grandest words ever uttered to an Indian subject of the British Crown : " Before your white Mother, before the law, and before God, every one of you stands on the same footing as any man in the British Empire." Be- fore we can thus transform the Indian into a useful citi- zen, we must raise him to the citizen's footing before the law, and give him a voice in making the law. 118 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. UTILIZING WASTE POPULATION. There are masses of population in our own country, as well as elsewhere, whose value to themselves and to the general connnunity depends mostly upon their location. Now, population, everywhere and always, shoidd be a valuable portion of a nation's wealth and well-being, and no nation can afford to let masses of its people run to waste and become worthless as an element of prosperity. In ancient times great powers waged wars to capture for- eign populations ami transfer them en vuif^se to their own countries. Thus the kings of Assyria and Babylon car- ried away to their own lands nearly the whole popula- tion of Israel and Judah for the value they would add to their kingdoms, not as slaves, but as subjects, introducing all the arts, industries, and ingenuities of their native countries. In modern times, the same value has been at- tached to populations acquii-ed from abroad. They have always been regarded as among the most fertile sources of our growth and prosperity as a nation, whatever their race or condition. It v, as not their absolute worth on their first arrival that was looked at, but their value after having taken root in our republican so il, and the genera- tions th^^y would produce as native Americans under our republican institutions. We see what hundreds of thou- sands of them have become, and what they are doing to- day in every department of industry. They are not con- fined to manufactories, railways, and mines, but are as widely engaged in agricultural labour. Already nearly half of the farms in New England are owned as well as tilled by Irish and Germans. In many towns their chil- dren make half the attendance at the public schools, and when grown to manhood and womanliood they will be, and look, as completely Americanized as if their great- grandfathers had been born in this country. There was never l time when the different countries ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 119 and sections of country on this continent were more ac- tive in importing and planting populations from abroad within their limits. We see what Brazil is doing on the .soiitii and the British Provinces on the north, in this line of economy. Here is New Brunswick importing and planting a colony of Swedes, furnishing to each family a comfortable log-house, a homestead with six acres of land cleared, provisions for six months, and agricultural tools and seeds. Now, we have many States that need popu- lation as much as New Brunswick, and can afford to do as much to obtain them. There is Virginia, for instance, tliat lias never been half peopled, and yet there is no State in the Union whose natural resources from the sea- coast to the Ohio could supply the raw material for so many industries. But neither Virginia nor any other State needs to go abroad for the population it requires. There are thousands and tens of thousands in our large cities, manufacturing and mining centres who are running to waste in compulsory idleness, and who might be made a source of wealth if transplanted and set out on a new , Hue of life, hope and possibility. But there must be done for then» what New Brunswick is doing to this end for the Swb les. Our government has long offered a home- stead of more than 100 acres in the fertile West to every actual settler. But, and in innumerable cases, it might as well have offered Cleopatra's Needle to a New York cellar tenant, if he would remove it. The offer of such homesteads is almost a mockery to a full million of men and women who know not what home means in any fair sense of enjoyment. The question then arises, How can the waste popula- tions of our large cities be utilized and transplanted where they would be useful to the general conujiunity as well as raised to a higher level of moral and social life ? Has any parallel enterprise been ,^et on loot with results that would justify this undertaking There are the Prince Albert, Peabody, and Waterlow j^ j>del Lodging Houses in 120 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. London, which may be cited as proof that such enter- prises for the elevation of tlie poor will [)ay in money as well as in other satisfactions. They are not charitable institutions, but establishments that pay the interest of the money invested in them. Every tenant pays as much as he did for the lodgings he left, but he gets ten- fold the comfort he had in his former cellar or garret. The most squalid and unhealthy; tenements in New York and other large cities pay a higher rate of interest on the money invested than the grandest brown stone mansions of wealth in the fashionable quarters. Whether the tenant begs or steals, he must pay his weekly or monthly rent or be evicted. But whether he occupies a cellar or garret, or the best Model Lodging-house, his tenement does not earn him a farthing by night or day. He must earn his rent-money by his labour elsewhere. And he does this, and earns enough to make the best Peabody Build- ing pay a business profit. Thus we see that these Model Lodging-houses are more than self -supporting, even yielding a fair profit to their founders, with all the comforts they furnish for families that come from the unhealthy lairs of garrets and cellars. In view of this success, why would it not be safe for such a State as Virginia, which so much needs population, to try the experiment of Model Homestead Houses, to be let at a small but paying rent to tenants they might attract. The State might well afibrd to do as much for them as New Brunswick does for the Swedes. But on the basis of the Model Lodging-houses it might obtain a large and valuable population, and make the very process of their transplantation pay a business profit. I refer to Virginia, because of its great sections of unpeopled and wooded territory, and because an allotment mostly or entirely CDvered with timber furnishes labour for winter as well as the other seasons. Suppose, then, the State, or a com- pany of sufficient capital, should secure a tract of 10,000 or 5,000 acres of this woodland country, and divide it into ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 121 homesteads, 30 acres to each, and buihl on each a com- fortaUe log-house, clear six acres, and furnish seeds, tools, Hour and bacon for six months, as New Brunswick does for the Swedes. The whole outlay would probably not exceed $500, and an annual rent of $40 would pay a fair interest on the investment. Now ther3 is no tenant of a New York cellar or garret lodging who docs not pay more til an this for it. Here, then, not only a home would be opened to the garret-man of the crowded city, but a homestead, yielding continuous labour and comfortable subsistence for life ; where he could i-aise a family decently to take their place among the better chances and opportunities of an im- proving social life and civil community. Why should Virginia or any other State in equal need of population go to Sweden, Germany, or Italy for immigrants when there ar-e so many thousands in our crowded cities who would gladly occupy homes provided for them on this paying basis ? Not one of them can ever attain to one of the homesteads offered by our Government in the far West to those who can afford to go and take them. Not one in a thousand of them could raise money enough to pay his fare thither by railroad or any other road. If he could, how would he be able to build even a cabin on it for a dwelling, to buy tools for farm work, or horses or cattle to plow his land, or food to last him to his first crop ? No ; if these waste populations of our great cities are ever to be utilized, and become of value to the coun- try, and elevated to a higher level of moral life, they must be transplanted by the help of States, or by business companies, on this or a similar basis of paying philan- thropy. 122 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. OUR NEED OF THE ENGLISH WORKHOUSE. The experience of the last few years has proved that we not only have the poor always with us, but also " the dangerous classes " of the Old World, and even one unknown to European countries, and which, more than any that burdens them, is inflicting upon us increasing peril and annoyance. For the tramp in England and elsewhere abroad is a solitary vagabond and easily man- aged, but with us he is gregarious and formidable from union with his fellows. They move in bands through the country, though they may deploy as individual skir- mishers upon the community, levying contributions of food and clothing under a menace understood if not expressed. Thousands give to these sturdy and danger- ous beggars, as if commanded to stand and deliver, for they dare not refuse lest they put their own lives and property in peril. And yet, with all this voluntary and compulsory giving, the houses and barns burnt by tramps every year amount to a value that would board them at hotel fare for the same period. Undoubtedly, it has been almost a general impression that tramps are only new and temporary birds of passage and prey — that they will pass away and disaj^pear with the exceptional times that produced them. But the wish is the father of this thought,^f or it can find no foundation in experience or reason. The evil has had time and space enough to become chronic. The habit of vagabondage has become settled and strong in thousands who love to live by it without labour. There is enough of incident and adventure in it to make it attractive to them. It is a social life which they enjoy with a satisfaction akin to that which bands of buffalo or bear-hunters experience in the pursuit of their game under difficulties and manifold risks. We often hear of considerable encampments of tramps meeting here and there, as if to cement the order of their ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 123 brotherhood with fellowHhip often renewed, and to recount explorations, discoveries, adventures, feats of skill and courage, and all the attractive experience of their night- errantry. In England, a few years ago, an interesting book was published under the title of " The Autobio- graphy of a Vagabond," which was widely read. But how tame would this volume be to one which a short- hand reporter present at one of these tramp re-unions, would make out of the stories of their varied adventures, their midnight forays, hair-breadth escapes, and all the incidents of their organized vagabondage ? If such a volume were published and read it would convince the public that the mobilized army of tramps will never dis- band voluntarily for the pursuit of honest industry. For the last few years the increasing bands of tramps have urged a raison d'etre which the community could hardly gainsay. They have insisted that the sole reason for the existence of their order was the lack of labour — that they were travelling up and down the country, hunt- ing for some work to do for an honest livelihood. This was a forcible argument which few could repel or refute. Every bodj'' knew^ that there were hundreds of thousands of honest men out of employment and condemned to com- pulsory idleness. One could not find it in his heart to say that a man should neither be allowed to dig nor beg to keep himself from starvation. When every town and village was full of unemployed men ready and anxious to do, cheaply and faithfully, every small incidental job of work that was offered, no person cared to employ a strange tramp even to earn a meal of victuals or a pair of half- worn shoes. It was cheapest and safest to give him one or both, and send him off in the hope that he would never return. But in doing this, you did not refute his one, sole argument. You did not and could not prove that he was not willing to labour for an honest living if he could find work at small wages. You virtually con- ceded the truth and force of his argument, and even recognized the necessity of his manner of life. 124 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. It is quite probable that nine out often of the commu- nity believe that a revival of business and the renewed movement of all the wheels of industry will put an end to the tramps of the country by supplying them with the employment they claim to be hunting for. But the com- munity will find that they are reckoning without their host, in the indulgence of such a belief. If business pros- perity increases to the full extent of the general hope, we shall find that the mobilized army of tramps will not dis- band, or return, or rather resort to industrial life. We shall have to accept the situation, and make provisions for it, as they do in other countries. We cannot shut our eyes to the fact : we have with us already all the classes that vice, poverty and ignorance have made " dangerous " in the Old World, and we must have the Old World insti- tutions to protect society against them. We have nearly all these institutions except one, and that one has become an urgent, outspoken necessity. We must have the English Work-house, with whatever improvements we may add to it. We cannot afford or need one in every half-dozen towns, as in England, but w^e ought to have one in every county in our populous Northern States, or one within twenty-five miles of every town and village. Such an institution is as much needed as a county jail. It should not be a prison or poor-house, neither for criminals nor indigent invalids, or mental incompetents. It should be especially fi.tted for the class of actual or prospective vagrants who claim to beg only because they cannot find work. It should fully meet their case and provide such an amount and variety of out-door and in-door labour, as should not only pay their board but also something ovei' for the poor-house or asylum. If, like a similar class in Japan, they should be sent out by the institution with a suit of clothes and a little mone}-^ as a reward for honest work, it would enhance the merit of the system. Such a work-house must be estn.blished in a country town, with plenty of land for sunmier work, and as many ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 125 mechanical industries as practicable for in-door employ- ment in winter. With such an institution, every town and village could make a clean sweep of tramps, for it could say to every one of the able-bodied vagrants : " There is the workhouse, within a day's walk at the farthest. There you will find plenty of work, and better food and lodging than you can get by begging." This would test the motive of their vagrancy. If they refuse the work-house they nuist accept the prison. " There is no discharge from this war " with voluntary indolence and vagabondage. We must supplement our jails, poor-houses and asylums with this English institution. It must be a county establishment, at least in our most populous States. And there is hardly a county in them all that has not had an amount of property destroyed by tramps equal to the cost of a work-house and three hundred acres of land. The location, erection and working of such an establish- ment are matters of detail which the county would decide for itself. Its authority to found such an institution could be obtained through an easy process of legislation. What county, then, in these Northern States will lead the way, and set the example of introducing the English Work-house, with American improvements ? THE NECESSITY OF RE-PEOPLING NEW ENGLAND. The motives and arguments for re-peopling New-En- gland with its own sons and daughters are becoming more and more pressing and evident. All that is precious in her past, all that is urgent in her present and hopeful in her future combine to make this consummation a moral, economical and political necessity. The moral may be put the first of these considerations, and in the form of a familiar illustration. All our large cities and populous 126 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. towns are becoming fully alive to the necesHity of an abundant supply of pure water for sanitary as well as other purposes. They all have to go to the country for it, some forty, some twenty, and all several miles, not merely for plenty, but purity. They construct costly re- servoirs and aqueducts, and lay down main pipes and a whole subterranean system of arteries and veins for the supply demanded by city life. In all such cities and towns an unfailing and abundant supply of country wa- ter is fully proved to be a vital necessity to the people as a sanitary element. Without it their contrition would be intolerable, and every city a breeding sink: of disease. Well, in these latter years of greedy and reckless specu- lation, the moral waste going on in our large cities proves that they need as many reservoirs and feeders of healthy country charactei- as they do of countrj'^ water for their streets and houses. For a hundred years all our New England cities and centres of population have had a con- tinuous and abundant supply of these moral elements from the small hill and valley towns of the country. If the census of their leading men in every department of influence were given us, it would be found that three- fourths of them came from the small farming towns, where they received the groundwork of their character which they brought with them as a shaping influence on city life and morals. In a word, for a hundred years the country has made the town in New England in its best elements of character. But new and different years are preparing for our moral condition and history. If there be no radical change in the movement of our populations, these country reservoirs of moral character will be soon exhausted. No country in the wide world ever poured more healthy streams into the currents of city life than did once the farm-homes of our New England States. But those homes are changing hands and occupants and character with a lapidity and result which few, perhaps not one in a thousand, have stopped to notice. The at- ECONOMICAI. AND INDUSTRIAL. 127 tractions of city residence and ImainesH, or of the congre- ^'ate industries of our manufacturinor centres, have })een steadily drawing away hundreds and thousands of vigor- ous young men born in those homes, and who should in- herit and occupy them and make them what they have been in the best years of New England's history. What is the process that results from this course ? The fathers of these thousands of young men are left alone on these homesteads to carry them on through seed-time and har- vest with the hired help of Irish and Germans. As age comes on them, and their sons being no longer with them to occupy and keep up the old home of their forefathers, they offer their farms for sale to the highest bidder, and retire to some house with a small garden in some village or small city. The highest bidder is almost sure to be an Irishman or German, and he enters into possession of a home which has given to New England a long succession of those families which have had such a part in its his- tory. This is the process now going on in every farming town in New England, and thousands of its old Puritan homes are already occupied by Irish and Germans. Is it not time, then, for thoughtful minds to consider the moral bearings of this transformation on the future character of both city and country life in New England ? But the economic aspect of the question is still, if pos- sible, more serious. Can any observant witness of the present condition of things shut his eyes to its tendency and result ? Can anything be more evident than the fact that masters are rapidly decreasing and servants in- creasing in number in every considerable town or manu- facturing village ? Do we not see this process going on at an increased pace before us at all such centres ? There was a time, which many of us can remember, when two or three men trained to the business would put their small capital together and manufacture articles at a profit. But that time is gone forever. Private firms have been swallowed up by large joint-stock companies, against 128 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS which no common partnership could stand a day. These great corporations have brought in a kind of ahmnteeism, almost akin to that of Ireland or tlie West-Indies under the old regime. In s<;nie cases nearly all the stockholders or directors live in diii'erent and distant cities, leaving none but an acting manager and two or throe other subor- dinates to carry on the business with a steady and unwa- vering eye to regular dividends. The comi)any is an in- visible, intangible, inaccessible entity, not only to tlie general community around the factory, but to the opera- tives themselves. After having swallowed up all small firms, their appetite for deglutition grows l)y what it feeds upon, and they begin to swallow up each other, or to amalgamate, to increase their power and suppress com- petition. Now, then, what chance can any young man see of his ever becoming his own master while living h\B best years under the steam- whistle of such a corporation ? Look at his prospects and possibilities in the present condition of the country. When business is the best, the utmost strain his strength and skill will bear is put upon him in order to house, feed and clothe himself and his family up to that level of comfort which he fee -t constrained as well as ambitious to maintain. Expensive habits grow with the growth of the manufacturing village, and he dares not be singular by close economy. These expenses swal- low up good wages. He lives well, but finds it hard to sa^'e for the day when he can no longer work. The steam-whistle calls him to the factory while it is yet dark on winter mornings. He seldom sees his young children except on Sunday, as they are asleep in their beds when he leaves in the morning and returns at night with his dinner-pail. If by dint of extraordinary economy he can lay by a little at the week's end, it is to build a house for his later years. When built, he gets back the interest of his money in free rent, minus the taxes. That is all. ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 129 Should the great factory fail, his h«)us(? would not sell for half its cost. Not a thin<,^ he owns earns him a cent when he is asleep or away from his work. And these late years prove how precarious is manufacturing labour, and what immeasurable distress comes upon hundreds of thousands of men in the prime of life when paying labour fails. Even when the journeyman mechanic has full work and wages he must sometimes, while carrying his dinner-pail to the factory, measure the comfort and dignity of his position with what his father and grandfather enjoyed on the old homestead among the hills. But how the contrast iiiust bear upon his manhood when the corporation shuts down its gates, and his work is at an end ! I do not know if these reflections will reach a dozen of those for whom they are intended. But if that number of farmers' sons should read them at their fathers' fire- sides, I Would say to them, stay by the old homestea<l. Tjeasure it, till it, beautify and enjoy it. Do not sell or pawn it for a mess of pottage. Do not exchange the ciown of independent manhood for the collar of a corpor- ation, for on no other condition can you leave the farm for the factory. To the thousands who have been tempted to make this exchange, and are now looking with downcast eyes and heavy hearts upon wives and children whose bread they can no longer earn for want of work, I would say : Do not go West ; go North, East or South, here in your own New England. Here, within a day's journey, you may lind plenty of farm homesteads of every size and price for your choice, on the easiest terms. And go where you will in the wide world, you will not find the dignity and comfort of farm life on a higher level than in this New England. Nowhere else is the farmer's home so near his neighl)our's, so near the church, so near the school, so near to all the facilities of social and religious fellowship and enjoyment. The ownership of fifty acres on one of these interior hillsides, though the soil be worn and poor, will 130 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. make you what you never can be as a hired workman — your own master, emancipated forever from the factory whistle. That small holding will supply you with work from year to year with no involuntary break of occupa- tion. With the thought, the skill and industry you give to mechanical labour, your little farm will produce all your family need to eat, wear and enjoy. Your face may be browned with the summer sun, but it will look as manly as any tinge or lack of tinge which the gas and grease of the factory may give it. Go back into the coun- tiy and help re-people our New England with its own children. Go back and help to make its character and history what they were — its best boast and the admiration of all our American states. THE FETTERED LABOURER. The story of Tantalus is so familiar that it is the only one from classic mythology that has added a common word to the English language. To tantalize is to inflict or experience a condition similar to the one he endured. For some offence he was confined in the middle of a lake, but whenever he essayed to drinl^, the water withdrew from the reach of his parched lips, and yet remained so near that it added fire to his burning thirst. There were trees that hung their delicious fruits close to his face, but when he stretched out his hand to pluck them they with- drew beyond the tether of his chain, and mocked him with their sight and flavour. Now, without imputing in- tentional wrong to either side, we have this sad experience reproduced in this great and happy country, as we would fain call it. And it becomes all men of influential minds to consider how the country has drifted into this condi- tion, and how it may escape from it. In the first place, ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 131 tiien, let us see under what circumstances such a vast amount of American labour became fettered, and to a cer- tain degree subjected to the experience of poor Tantalus. Thirty years ago labour was safely and. happily distri- buted in this country. It was the pre-corporation period of our industrial history. Our manufactures and com- merce were conducted by private finns of two or three individuals well trained for the business, who gave to it the whole concentrated force of their interest, thought, and experience ; who were generally at it first in the morning and last at night, always accessible to their em- ployes, and personally responsible and responsive to them. They depended on their own capital, and were cautious in risking it in hazardous speculations. Under this private firm regime, labour was freely mobilized and equably distributed among all the industrial occupations. The force needed by one of them was not weakened by the demands or attractions of another. Capital and labour moved on hand in hand, in peace and healthy prosperity. But the regime of the incorporated capital, operating in large companies of absentee, invisible, or inaccessible stock- holders, changed all this even condition of industry. In- stead of two or three men with five or ten thousand dollars each entering into co-partnership, a,nd managing a business with three minds and three pairs of earnest eyes fixed upon it, we now had an incorporated company of twenty or thirty shareholders, scattered, it might be, over several States, not one in ten of them having any personal training or experience in a business to be carried on by proxy or by hired managers. These stoclcholders could sell their stock in a coal-mine or a steam-engine factory, to tailors, Jhatters, and fancy -goods dealers, ihus increasing the constituency of the corporation until the president hardly knew who or how many were its members, except on dividend days. Yet, in face of experience and the natural teachings of common sense, they w(3re tempted to yield to the deception which Gladstone denc>unces as " tht? 132 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. folly of investors who deluded themselves with the belief that they could expect, with shareholders in a company, to reap all the profits which before had been earned by trained and experienced manufacturers, who had spent their early lives in the learning and their maturer years in the administration of a comf)Iicated industry." But there were follies more serious attending the system. Incorporated (Companies came in with a rush of adventur- ous speculation. There was plenty of capital, eager and pressing for the investment. Indeed, in many cases there were secret rings formed to take all the stock before it was offered to the public, as the law demanded. The tempta- tion worked to its natural direction and issue. A " grab game " for the business of the country is now played by competing corporations, with almost the positive and vis- ible certainty that the total amount of that business can- . not long sustain them all. Never mind if some of them go to the wall in the race ; so much the better for the rest. Let the hindermost take care of itself. It is not for such a company to estimate how much of its productions the country can take year by year, or how many rivals it has in the field competing for all they can get of the con- sumable amount. In every country the tendency of joint-stock companies is to overstock the market with their productions. Take an English case for example — that of the steam-ship com- panies of Liverpool. They have run the same race of reckless competition for business between Europe and America. It is evident that not one of them ever esti- mated the amount of that business, or how many steam- ships it would sustain. But they went on, putting fleet upon fleet on the Atlantic until scarcely half of them could find freight or passengers. It is natural and inevitable that the most highly protected manufacture should be the first to be "run into the ground," to use a popular and expressive phrase. A new company has been recently formed for competing with a powerful corpora- ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 133 tion which has had virtually the monopoly in the produc- tion of an article favoured with a prohihitoiy duty. It is said that this new company has declared that it will spend $200,000 in competing with its old-establislied rival, while that threatens, by way of retort, that it will put up $1,000,000 as sinews for such a war. What do they mean by throwing down to each other such a gauntlet ? Evi- dently and only that one intends to un<lersell the other in the market until the weaker succumbs. Neither intends to sell at this ruining price after its rival has been driven to the wall. The new company does not expect that its additional production will create a demand for it in the market, nor that the market was not even crowded with a supply before its wheels had turned out a gross of the article. The market can only take in a certain amount of the manufacture yearly, and the production of this amount will only give steady employment and fair wages to a certain amount of labour. But the new company sends out and calls into its establishment several hundred men, women, and children. The race begins : the result is to he soon and certain. If one of the rivals breaks down, all the labour it employed is dismissed to compulsory idleness. If they run on neck and neck the market is soon choked with their aggregate production. Then what? Let us see. We must accept the situation. We could not if we would, and we would not if we could, disband these joint- stock companies, and relegate the manufactures of the country to the old private-tirm system. They are not the out-growth of an inflated currency, or inflated speculation, or of any or of all the inflations that spring from shoddy- money. They have been even more numerous and reckless in England on a gold basis, than in this country on legal- tender paper. They are to ha with us hereafter as nnmerous and varied when our paper money is at par with gold. And they will be just as sure to overstock the market periodically, and throw out of employ a vast 134 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. amount of labour for months, perhaps for two or three years at a time. We must anticipate this condition, and provide for it. That condition is now upon the country without any provision against the grievous evils it has produced. The country has long borne and deplored them, if it has not intelligently recognised their cause. Incorporated capital has founded those innumerable con gregate industries which are so attractive to labouring men, who find it so much more congenial to work in the great social companies of a factory or mine than singly on a country farm. This social attraction, in addition to weekly or monthly pay, draws thousands upon thou- sands from the fields of agriculture labour to these great establishments of indoor and congregate occupation. Al- ready it is probable .that fully one-third of the old farms of New England, and perhaps other States, have been abandoned by the sons who should have inherited and tilled them, for factory life. The old homesteads of their ancestors are passing into the hands of foreign-born men of a different race and religion ; and already nearly a third of the churches in which they were baptized have become virtually mission stations, because too few of the farms remain in American hands to support a regular minister. As an illustration of the force of these attractions of fac- tory life, a single case may suffice. Within two minutes' walk of my own door, a strong, sterling young man is living, with his wife and infant child, in a hired attic chamber, having left his father's mansion and 500 acre farm near the Hudson, for a heavy, greasy occupation in a manufacturing establishment, where he can never hope to be master of anything more than his daily wages, if secure of continuous employment. Here then we have the chief cause of the condition to which labour has been reduced so long in this country and all other manufacturing countries. The congiegate indus- tries established by incorporated capital have diawn a vast amount of labour from agricultural life and occupation ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 135 and mansed ifc in manufacturing towns. Hero it fared well, and thought " the morrow would be as this day and much more abundant." But a morrow, that hopeful and contented labour did not look for, came and changed the situation. The Ameiican market became gorged with the production of so many competing wheels. They must stop and did stop — thousands of them. Some turned slowly a few hours daily. Wages fell at first, and then ceased for lack of employment. Then came a gorge in labour which waited month after month for the wheels to turn at their old number and speed ; and while it waited its savings wasted away in compulsory idleness. The savings of the most industrious and frugal could not last long, and as this unemployed labour became penniless, it became fettered, as it were, on the door-stone of the fac- tory that could no longer employ it. It could not move from it except as a suspected tramp. It was in vain to stretch out its imploring arms to either State or Nation for help. Its condition closely resembled the experience of Tantalus. Let us now see what our National Govern- ment has contributed to the Tantalusia of fettered labour. It has provided for it the lake of pure, cold \ ,ter, just beyond the reach of its parched lips. It has planted the banks of the lake with trees whose delicious fruits hang mockingly just beyond the tether of its chain. There is this little difference in the situation. The lake in which Tantalus was fettered had no deep outlet to draw off its waters. No one cut down the fruit trees on its banks. All remained unwasted, and in full sight of the victim. Here the parallel fails. Our Government offerp to fettered labour as many acres as it can till — if it will go to some wild section west of the Mississippi and find land not al- ready given to a railway company. There is the water of the situation, but incorporated capital is fast drawing it oft' to irrigate its fields of speculation. Already the rail- way companies have grabbed the best portion of the public domain, and barred off labour from the intended 136 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. gift of the Nation. Even a RepubK'» must .say W6, even as a king does. Let us liear the best ours can say as to the fettered labour of the country : " Tliere is still a great vleal of land betw^een the Missis- sippi and the Rocky Mountains that we h«ave not yet given to railway companies. It is scarcely fifteen hun- dred miles from what you call your own door. Go and hunt up a homestead in these wide regions and it shall be yours. We make you a fi-ee gift of it. You should be grateful for such a generous offer. It is all we can do for you ; it is all you ought to ask. No, we cannot give or lend you any money to help you to reach the offered homestead or to build a hut upon it. Don't tell us about that ; if we gave millions upon millions of the best acres of the public domain to the great railway companies, and indorsed their bonds for millions upon millions of dollars, that has nothing to do with it. These great corporations have rights and interests which we are bound by their connection with us to i-espect and guarantee. Yes ; it is all very well for a monarchical government like England to loan money to individuals foi" draining land and for other purposes ; it is all very well for Canada to pay the passage money for seven thousand Mennonites from Southern Russia to settle in Manitoba, and to loan money to the Icelanders in the same region to help them to make a start in a new life ; but these are paternal Govern- ments, and it would not become the dignity of a Republic like ours to show such paternal sentimentality towards the poorest of our citizens. No, we cannot do that either. We know it is hard, that in these years of stifled industry, millions of dollars, earned and saved by labouring men, women and children, have dropped through the large- meshed scoop-nets of rascally savings banks into the hands of speculating capital, never to be recovered. Yes, we know that England does it ; that she invites all her labouring men, women and children to drop every penny they would save into her broad, strong hand, to hold it ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRUL. 137 for them. That is paternal and sentimental, and we can- not be either towards you. We cannot guarantee the safe kee[)ing of what you lay aside for a rainy day, any more than we did for the pennies, half-dimes and dimes the poor, ignorant negroes thought they had dropped into our hand, because the Freedmen's Savings Bank stood so near our own door, and mounted our flag. No, that is all we can do for you. There is the land for you in Dakota or New- Mexico. You must get to it as you can, and ask us for nothing more." This is substantially the language of our Government, and it describes the part which it contributes to the pre- sent Tantalusia of fettered labour. So we cannot expect either the National Government or a State Government to help mobilize this labour, or to release it from the gorges in which it is waiting for employment. For a State is a Republic, too, and will not be paternal, and it will be in vain for us to ask it to help in the matter. Labour ijjust be mobilized and redistributed till the avenues of incorporated and congregate occupations shall no longer be crowded by thousands waiting in idleness to be em- ployed in them. In a word, the suiplus labour must be drafted off into agriculture, and this must be done by in- dividual effort or by joint-stock companies, and done on a business-paying basis. The land for homesteads should be within thirty-six hours' ride by rail of the labourers who are to occupy them. It should be wooded land, with a few acres already cleared for them, with a log-house eeected already to receive them, and a few months' pro- visions and some agricultural tools and seeds — or just that outfit which New-Brunswick gives to the colony of Swedes which it has induced and enabled to settle in that province. And, if possible, there should be a block of about 2,000 acres of such land, to be divided into at least thirty-acre allotments, so that the settlers should form a compact community of themselves. And these home- steads thus allotted and provisioned, should pay fair rents, I 138 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. and a little additional yearly, as a sinking fund, so that the occupant may own the j)roperty in the end. Where- ever he is, and however poor at the present moment, he pays rent for the lodging he occupies, unless he sleeps in a barn. With a few acres cleared ready to his hand, wooded land is the best for him, for it will furnish em- ployment for him all the year round in cutting timber and preparing increased space for tillage. Now, there is no State in the Union that so much needs industrial population as Virginia. There is none so near this surplus unemployed labour that has such great sections of wild or wooded land which should be brought into cultivation. Theie is none with such a variety of climates, soils and natural resources for every kind of occupation. A thousand labourers once on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroads could walk to a section fitted for such a settlement in a single day. Here, then, is a noble field of patriotic and economic enterprise for Virginians of means and elevated motives, who believe all this oi their native State. They can lose nothing by trying one experi- ment in the movement. The process is cheap, expeditious and simple. Let a dozen men, who would give it a fair trial, form a Home Land and Labour Company, and pur- chase, if practicable, 2,000 acres of wooded land, and divide it into thirty-acre allotments. Then let them advertise in the sections so thronged with unemployed labour, for fifty or 100 wood-cutters, at fai^' wages, to clear six acres of each of these allotments Let them include tv^^o or three cai'penters and joiners to direct and assist at the construc- tion of a comfortable log-house for each homestead, and a central building of a suitable size for a chapel and school- house. Give these hired labourers, who have thus pre- pared the allotments for occupation, the first chance and right to occupy and own them, and partly or wholly to provision them for six months with their own wages. Attach a fair value to each homestead thus made ready for its occupant, and to all the tools a,nd provisions ad- ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. l39 vanced to him, and charge a fair and paying rentage and intere.st upon the amount. Let it be a rigidly business transaction, paying as fair rate of profit on the capital as any of Alderman Waterlow's tenement houses in London. Appoint a resident or visiting agent to supervise the colony, collect rentage, advise and assist in settling any differences, and to act in any requisite way for the corpo- lation. How easy and cheap it would be to try an experiment of this small extent I If it succeeded, others on a larger scale would follow, Virginia could take in 100,000 of these unemployed labourers, and pi'ovide such a home- stead for every one of them, and they would be a wealth to her. THE FALSE LIGHTS OF GREAT NAMES. There is no kind of deception so cruel and fatal as that represented by false lights. The two words bring in- stantly before the .minr" an act and scene that thrill one with horror at the wickedness that man can plan and perpetrate against his fellow-beings. We see in it a meaner animus than in bold, open piracy. We see a rocky shore, with crags jutting out into the sea, like the teeth of a huge steel trap. The night is dark, and the tempest is tossing, many a vessel wrestling with the loud and ser- ried waves, towards some shelter from their fury. We see a man, or being in human shape, stealing out in the darkness, and hoisting a light over some deadly crag or reef, as a lamp to a haven of refuge and safety. We see him and his fellow-harpies crouching and peering with their wolfish eyes at the approaching vessel, which has noticed and obeyed the welcome signal. It has been long at sea, and outridden many storms ; but now it will soon 140 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. he saf(3 from tluj last in a (|uict harbour. There is glad- ness on board from captain to cabin-boy — for a few min- utes. Then comes the crash, the cry, the foaming, roar- ing waves pounding the swept and wrecked vessel on the ragged rocks, a prey for the human vultures that pounce upon the stranded cargo. Dead men tell no tales, and few survivors of such wrecks are to be seen by " the false lights on the shore." Now, for some twenty years past, the wreckers who live by stranded fortunes have found that the most out- reaching and seductive lights they could hoist on a lee- shore of ruin are great names, which have come to high reputation among men — the names of statesmen, ambas sadors, members of Parliament, or of Congress — names that seem to stand for, and stand by, an elevated and re- fined sense of honour, purity, honesty and integrity in thought, word and deed. Especially if the light of such names when lifted up could show the tint of religious profession, it became more attractive and more valuable to the wreckers as a decoy. Thus " Christian statesmen," " Christian bankers," " Christian merchants, etc., both in England and America, have been the best lights for de- coying the confidence of the people and their earnings and savings to the enrichment of private firms and large corporations. There was Sir John Paul, for example. What a shining light he was in the religio is world — that is, shining so sharply out of one oide of the dark-lantern of his life — the side turned toward the sea and the vessels on it. What a valiant champion, especially, of Protestantism ! What a chairman for its convocations, and other reli- gious meetings in Exeter Hall ! Godliness, or rather its pretence, was a great gain to him. He thought the latter gave him great promise in this world, and he put it forth in all high places where it would show well. It drew wonderfully in its decoying force. One literary lady not only entrusted to him her fortune, but wrote a good and pious book, dedicating it to him as a " Christian banker," ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTllIAL. 141 just before she and hundreds of others, decoyed by the same false light, were wrecked on the rocks to which it led them. But he did not go scot-free of punishment, like many wreckers, both English and American. Justice caught him with his dark-lantern in his hand, and shut him up in a felon's prison for life. But hundreds of his kind, in both countries, are walking in the midst of so- ciety, unwhipped and unbranded of justice. The experience of the past few years has proved, both in England and America, the imminent peril of great names to the common and honest people. In fact, the greater the names, the greater the danger of disaster to those who trust them. This result is almost fixed by a law of modern society. Look at its working. A bank, a mine, or railroad, is to be taken in hand by a joint stock corporation, and " floated " on paper, or bonds, shares, etc. But paper will not float long alone. There must be actual money invested, and this must be got out of the people somehow, and they will not buy bonds or shares with- out confldence in the enterprise and its managers. What is first needed is the drawing power of great names. Such names are the capital precedent of the concern. Without them no money can be obtained. They must be had for the prospectus at any price, and each is bought cheaply at the prospective value of a certain number of shares. It shall all be made easy to an earl, baronet, or untitled, but popular member of Parliament, if he will only let his name serve on the prospectus as honorary chairman, vice-chairman or director. Of course, he will not he expected to exercise any personal watch or care over the detail of the business, such as looking at the books, or any of that sort of thing. 0, no ; there will be a second, subordinate class of men, who will attend to all these matters. Men with such great names in political or social life are not expected to descend to personal su- pervision of the management of such an enterprise. Often these eminent individuals are only asked to let their 142 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS names nerve on the prospectus for a limited period, or un- til the speculation is fairly floated, when one by one they fall off, unnoticed by the common people, who think they are ;still on it, and responsible for their confidence, until they are wrecked on the rocks of ruin by these " false lights on the shore." Now, thousands of men and women, including widows and orphans, in England, have been wrecked, and have lost their earnings aud savings for years, by being decoyed to their ruin by tlie deceitful light of great names hoisted over some Imperial Life Insurance Company, Inter-Con- tinental Credit Mobilier, or Consolidated North Ameri- can Petroleum Company, or Mining Association — some enterprise of many-worded appellation, sounding very grand, like a cataract of gold sovereigns. Recently two great names were brought into an English court of justice, and tried for their deception in decoying the con- fidence of share-buyers in sham oil wells in Canada. They merely escaped punishment for the fraud through the plea, which the judge admitted, that they did not really know that the prospectus of the company was false when they signed it ; which meant that the prospectus was a pole prepared and raised by irresponsible subor- dinates, to which the false lights of great names were to be hung, to decoy the confidence and capital of the people. The false lights of great names have been made to serve the same ends in this country. They have been as nu- merous, dangerous, and destructive with us, when raised on the prospectus pole of great corporations and of pri- vate firms. And the saddest deception this light ever per- petrated in America has been wrought by a name which, to the four millions just rising out of the mire of slavery, stood next in trusi reverence and strength to the name of the Almighty himself. I will not again undertake to show and prove that the corporation of the Freedmen's Savings' Bank at Washington, did, to all intents and is- sues, raise the light of the great name of this gi'eat na- ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 143 tion over every negro's cabin in the Southern States. To liis single, unquestioning eye and mind, it was the same lii^dit tliat was raised ever the Freechnen's Bureau ; and liy tliat light, sliining from some national staff, he walked ^.ith liis simple confidence and small savings right into the bog, where he now lies floundering in despair in sight and hearing of the nation, which holds out no hand or h(>})e to him but the shallow promise that he may receive from the salvage, some time next winter, one-fifth of wliat he lost by the wreck of his trust in the government of this great country. But counting up the wrecks, small and great, wrought in this country by such false lights, it will be found that those tinted with the roseate sheen of religious profession, have been the most seductive and dangerous, as well as the most numerous. Our great political and social names do not draw with such attractive power as the names of dukes, earls and baronets in England. Even the common English M.P. draws there better than our M.C., and is worth more at the top of a prospectus-pole, to command the confidence and capital of the people. But it is a tribute to the virtue especially of our more religious communities, that the greatest number of indi- vidual or private wreckers have found that godliness is great gain in their trade, and if they could make a good show of it, they would be sure to win the confidence which would be profitable to them in this world. Hence a name widely known for long prayers in widows' houses, in the market places and in other public places and con- vocations, was a strong card to play, and it has been played often in almost every town, great and small, in the coun- try. Such names have had gi'eat power at the head of a savings bank. There, for instance, was Deacon T's Bank, in a neighbouring city. He is a very godly man. See what he gives to iv^reign and domestic missions. What a man of prayer at religious meetings. There is a man we can trust. And he was trusted with the little savings 144 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. of poor men and women far and near. For he was a shining light, and it reached out into distant towns, and widows and orphans there were glad to trust in his hands what they had saved for the rainy day. When the wreck- ing day came, hundreds of little barks and boats were broken on the rock to which the light of his religious name enticed them. Soon the waters closed over these sunken wrecks, and the same kind of decoy light was raised over another bark in the same city. It was a still greater light of religious manifestation. Here was a firm of godly men who would eclipse Sir John Paul in reli- gious zeal, devotion and munificence, and prove them- selves in very deed, against his mere pretence, a living illustration of the " Christian Banker." They would pay semi-annually a liberal interest on all deposits, great or email. Their light shone out far and wide in every direction. It drew depositors in crowds from far and near. It is said they received deposits up to within fif- teen minutes of the crash and fall of their sand-built house ; and the wreck of it yielded a smaller pittance to the depositors than the Southern negroes will get from the wreck of the Freedmen's Savings' Bank at Washing- ton. With the experience of the past few years before us, is it not about time that the community should begin to distrust the light of mere names, whatever position, re- putation or pretension are represented by them ? What a ruinous traffic have such names carried on with the con- fidence and interests of thousands in this present year ! How the trade value of names has been " watered," like fancy stocks, then sold out, root and branch, when it had reached the highest figure it could attain ! We see the process in hundreds of growing trading-names for specu- lation. They rise eai'ly and toil late for years, to get the reputation of men of the purest honour and strictest in- tegrity, who may be trusted to any amount of confidence. When they have raised that reputation to the highest ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTBIAL, 145 point, their card is played out ; they grasp the spoils, and sneak off with them beyond the reach of justice. Says the great Master : " By their fruits shall ye know them ; " not by their leaves ; not by their names. The time has come for the sifting of great names. They have had great power in courts of justice, as well as in the wider juries of public opinion. Under the broad phylac- teries of their reputation, iniquities, impurities and scan- dalous acts have been hidden which common names could not conceal. Great names are now on their trial, and however painful the process of justice we may well say : Fiat justitia, mat ccelum. THE CONTAGIOUS DEMORALIZATION OF SHODDY MONEY. No idea is more definite or more fully comprehended than that expressed by the term shoddy. The word was seldom used before the late war, when it was applied to one of those shams and cruel deceits which a war always brings in with its insidious demoralizations. The soldier's coat, melting into a pulp on his back under a cold rain, showed the shoddy in its villanous composition. Now, if shoddy were only one of the results of that widely diversified demoralization which war is certain and expected to produce ; if shoddy only entered into the coats and blankets of soldiers in field and camp, it would be a short-lived sham, and the country would be rid of it on the return of peace. But, unfortunately, shoddy is an element which plays but a temporary and comparatively innocent part in the material pretended to be cloth. It enters into the moral texture of society, and almost every (lay we see how much shoddy there was in a character which stood high, bright and fair under the sunshine 146 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. of popular confidence and favour. When the winds blow, the rains fall and the flood beats upon a Credit Mobilier, a Northern Pacific Railroad or a great speculating bank, we see in the pulp of the structure how much of it was shoddy. Now, whoever gives fair and honest thought to the collapse of character, corporations and moneyed institu- tions, from Ralston's California Bank to the Freedman's Saving Bank at Washington, must see that shoddy money has been the leading cause of all these dishonest and disastrous speculations. There are certain principles which are mathematically and philosophically true, though imperceptible in their infinitesimal operations. When we are told that a single atom cannot be abstracted from the material world nor a new one added to it, our faith in the fact depends upon our belief in a law which acts unseen on things too minute for our naked eyes. We admit the principle must act in these minutise because it is the logic of a law we see operating on the grandest scale in the whole planetary world. Then it is equally true, and evident as well as logical, that if a government issues a dollar in gold or silver which is so debased by alloy that it does not contain a true dollar's vpJue in it- self, or if it issues a paper promise to pay a dollar which does not represent its ability to pay on demand a true dollar in exchange for the note, that government logically and mathematically adulterates every separate and col- lective value in the country, whether it be invested in land, labour or produce, or in manufactures, commerce or banking. It introduces shoddy not only into the old currency of the country but into every value which money represents and measures. We may not detect the alloy at such an infinitesimal infusion, but it exists and acts by a law as certain of its regime and results as any in the material world. An experienced cloth-maker on examining a soldier's coat or blanket could have told us how much shoddy ECONOMICAL AND INDUSTRIAL. 147 there was in a square yard of it. Now, if we cut into the currency of the country and see how much sheer credit or shoddy is in it, we may be perfectly certain that there is not only the same but a larger amount of shoddy in call the business enterprises, in all the reputed values, in all tliat is produced, sold, bought and used in the country. Nor is this the worst of it. This demoralizing element enters iiifco the living character, habits and conduct of men in every position. Were there ever before in the history of this country so many collapses of character in ten years as during the last decade ? Why, if a moral anatomist could cut into the character of a Tweed or a Fisk, he would be able to tell us how much shoddy there was in the currency of the country with as much precision as a woodman would tell the age of a tree he had felled, by counting its rings. Who can fail to see the moral result of shoddy money in all the railroad, steamship and canal rings which have played such a game before the nation during the last ten years ? It will require a stout Hercules to throttle these liydras of dishonesty while the mother monster lives to renew the brood. ♦■' J > CHAPTER V. FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. OLD BURCHELL'S POCKET. OLD BURCHELL'S POCKET — A TALK ON THE ALPHABETS— THE FORMATION OF WORDS— WHERE LANGUAGES WERE MADE AND PERFECTED— WORDY LAN- GUAGES—WHAT AUXILIARY VERBS DO FOR LEARNERS- HEAD-SPRINGS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. HE celebrated Oliver Goldsmith thus describes one of the most interesting characters in his " Vicar of Wakefield " :— " In general he was fondest of the company of children, whom he used to call harmless little men. He was famous, I found, for singing them ballads, and telling them stories ; and seldom went out without something in his pockets for them— a piece of gingerbread, or a half-penny whistle." Now I should like to do the same thing very much in- deed. Here it has been twenty years and more that I have been walking up and down England, talking to all sorts of people on all sorts of subjects ; but I never acted Old Burcheli to the children as I might have done and ought to have done. So it is no wonder if they have not thought so much of my visits as the boys and girls in his day thought of his morning or evening calls. Indeed, never a man had a more enjoyable time with the children than he did ; and he deserved it. He was a nobleman, and a very rich man, and, better yet, a very good man; who went about as if he were very poor, and poor folks loved to have him come into their small houses and talk and sing to their children. And the children who did not know who he was, were all on tiptoe of delight when they saw him staffing it along the green lanes. When ho was still a long way off, they could notice his pockets PIKESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 149 rounded out very lai-ge with all sorts of things for them ; for people wore their pockets outside their coats in those days. Then, when he laid off his 'reat cocked hat, and took two of the youngest of them oi his knees, and pulled out a piece of gingerbread for one, a little picture-book for another, and a half -penny whistle for another, and then sang them scraps of nice songs, and told them stories with his kind voice and eyes, they thought and said that there could not be a better kind of man in the world. Now, I am very sorry to say, that, before I had begun to think of such a thing, I have awoke up and found myself as old as good Mr. Burchell was when he went about in this way — full old enough to wear a cocked hat like his, and a coat to match it. How much I wish I could wear on the outside of mine a pocket as large as his, and fill it as well for the children ! There was always something so generous and confiding in an outside pocket of the olden time ; then it was so broad and deep, and one could put his hand into it so easily, that it meant well to every- body, and wore an inviting look, like the back-door to a large and warm heart. I am sorry such pockets have gone out of fashion, and that those worn now-a-days are much smaller and more shut up and hidden away from sight. But the largest I have I should dearly like to fill for the children around those English firesides that I have been visiting, one way and another, for these last . twenty years and more. I cannot sing them ballads, as Old Burchell did to his boys and girls ; but perhaps I can tell them a story now and then that may please them ; for I have travelled about the world a little, and seen and heard things in different countries that perhaps they would like to hear about. Besides, I have been, what some call, a hobhy-ridery and for a great many years I was in the sad- dle day and night. Not that I ever rode a dozen miles on the back of a real horse in all my life ; but, as they say, on the back of an idea. I have noticed, in a great many English homes, beautiful little horses of wood, with the 150 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. prettiest manes and tails, all saddled and bridled for children. The feet of these little steeds stand on rockers ; so that a boy or girl, when set upon the saddle, may dash off on a full canter without ever getting to the other end of the room. I sui)pose the little riders of these wooden ponies give them all sorts of pretty names, and try to believe that they are as near flesh and blood as can be ; and they much enjoy their daily gallops. Well, there are many of us, grown-up men, who have such horses, and ride them all our lives, and love them the better for every gallop we take. Now I have ridden half-a-dozen of such ponies in my day, and had a pleasant and kindly name for every one of them. The first was " Temperance," which I rode for many years; then I mounted "Peace" and " Brotherhood," " Ocean Fenny Postage" " Free Labour," and " Emancipation" I scarcely ever went ten miles from home except on the back of these little horses, and, what few ever do, I kept the whole stud of them saddled and bridled for a ride all the while, and mounted the one I thought best suited for the road, when I went out on long journeys. Then, too, I have been a great walker as well as rider. Three or four years ago, T bought a sixpenny staff, and footed it all the way from London to John 0' Groat's. Of course, all the children who have begun to go to school, know w:here the last place is. Then, the next year I walked with the same staff from London to Land's End and back. I always walked slowly, and kept my eyes and ears open to see and hear as much as one could do, and tried to remember it all, even the sight and song of the larks that warbled over every meadow from Land s End to John O'Groat's. A man who has ridden and walked in that way must be very stupid, if he did not pick up many pocketfuls of little things ifor the children which they will like to see, hear or have. Now this may seem like trying to make children be- lieve that I could open a pocket for them as deep and * FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 151 rich in good things as Old BurchcU's was; just to get them around me, as he did, all on tiptoe with the idea of seeing or hearing something nice. Well, I must own that I have been making this long talk about myself merely for this object — to get the first smile and the first " good morning!" from them, when their parents' door is opened to me. It is an old saying, that " you cannot catch old birds with chaft';" I don't wish to catch young ones either with it ; but I want them to give me a fair trial, and begin it with the belief that I really can bring them something from month to month that they may like and enjoy. It will be so much easier for me to do it if they will really believe I can before I try to interest them. It is rather sad for rae to think that I am such a stranger to them ; for when I first came to England, the parents of many of them were boys and girls from six to twelve years of age ; and they came and stood at my knees, and looked up at me with their rosy checks and happy eyes full of curious thoughts, as I told them stories about American children, their pkys and ways, and about other things in that far-off country. Now many of those ten- year old boys and girls are happy fathers and mothers, some of half a-dozen little ones, looking, I will warrant, like their parents at the same age ; and, like them, ready to hear the same stories, or some rather better. For I had not travelled so much then, nor seen much of the world, nor thought so much on difierent matters as I have since. So, really, I not only hope, but believe that I can till a pocket for them monthly, more like Old Burchell's than I could twenty years ago. Now all this is merely what a schoolmaster would call a prospectus, telling what he will do if a certain number of children will just come into his school and give him a trial as a teacher. You see, unless he can get them to come in and take the seats at his empty desks, he can do nothing at all with them or for them. He cannot go up and down the streets and lanes with his great black-board 152 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. on liis back, and a long green satchel full of books in his hand, and give lessons to stray boys and girls he may find at play. He must have them all in his school-room, where he may feel at home with them, and they with him. That is why he gets a proHpectus printed and sent around to people's houses; and this is why I have made all this long talk about the " Old Bui-chell's Pocket for the Children," which I intended to fill for them every month. I don't wish to give the whole lot to three or four boys and girls, but should like to have three or four hundred of them, promising " a piece of gingerbread or a half -penny whistle " to every one of them ; and the more the merrier. A TALK ON THE ALPHABETS. On thinking over what I said at my last visit, I fear I talked too much like a schoolmaster and an old man, and looked grave, and that some of the younger children thought I was trying to get them into a regular school- room, and drill them in dry, hard studies, which they had enough of already. If I did talk in that way, it was all a mistake, and I am sorry for it ; for I doubt if there is a boy in all England, able to read Robinson Crusoe, who is younger than I am in many things I am trying to learn, or who sits daily on a lower bench learning his A, B, C. This is the real fact ; and I hope it will prove to the chil- dren I talk to from month to month that I am not a hard- faced schoolmaster, but a fellow-pupil just beginning to learn the letters by heart which millions of children, not ten years old at this moment, in distant countries, were able to master long ago. Now, I have had a great curi- osity to know what kinds of A, B, C thoy had to commit to memory, so that I could enter into their feelings a little. FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 153 and see also if they had a harder time of it than English and American children in getting through their alphabets. So I am studying every day, like a six-year old boy, at these alphabets, trying to follow them around the globe. In the last two years I have learned six of them, all be- longing to Africa and Asia, and have now reached India, and hope to travel through China and Japan, and cross over to America from that great island, and see if I can master the queer, strange letters which the Cherokee Indians worked out to put their language in. And now, the further I go in the letters which the children of the wide, wide world have to learn, the more 1 am filled with wonder at the wisdom and power of the Alphabet. It is the greatest thing that man ever made on earth. Indeed, one might well doubt if man ever made it at all, or made it alone, without the help of a higher mind. Men who travel in Central America, Egypt, and the oldest countries of Asia, tell us of the ruins of cities temples, and monuments so vast in their day that we wonder if they could ever have been built except by giants ten or twenty feet in their shoes, and as strong as elephants. But all the pyramids in Egypt are nothing of man's might and mind compared with the first alpha- bet, which, it is said, was made in that country. The stout, long-lived men who built the tower of Babel might have carried its top to the very clouds if they had, not been stopped ; but when they had finished it to their wish they could not have written its name upon it, for they had not yet learned to make and use letters, like the children of this brighter day. It is sad to think that so many little nations have lived and died in Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, whom we never heard and never shall hear a word about, because they never had an A, B, C, and could not write their names upon the great towers temples, and walls they built, and no one could write them on their grave-stones. I sometimes wonder if the most learned men of the. 154 CHIPS FROM MANY JiLOCKS. present day have really studied the matter, and seen what a wonder and a power an alphabet is. Let us look into it for a moment, and compare it with something else we know well. Every boy and girl that can walk the carpet or the garden aisle has seen the rainbow, which a poet has called " The bridsje of colours seven." It does not look a yard wide when it spans a cloud in the east ; yet it contains all the distinct colours in the world, and a keen eye can pick them out one by one, for they run up and down the beautiful bow in lines, like a stave of music. Now, did you ever think of what has been done, and can be done, with these seven simple colours, by put- ting one beside the other in ditferent ways 'i I don't say, by what people call blending them, or mixing them, as you would mix milk and water, for really they cannot l)e mixed in that way, any more than seven letters in the alphabet can be melted and poured into a mould like so many bits of melted brass and lead. I mean, simply put- ting these colours side by side in this way and that way, just as you would make a great many whole words out of seven letters by doing the same to them. Many people call this changing of colours, letters, or notes in music, by a long name, or alternation. Now all the flowers that ever breathed on the earth, and all the gaudy plumage of the earth's birds in livery, and all the faces of its inen, and women and children have been tinted by this alter- nition of the seven colours which the first rainbow hung up in its arch in the new firmament. And when the last rainbow shall be drawn around the east, there will not be a flower beneath it, or a star above it, or a human face turned to either of them, which shall not show the com- plexion which its tints gave it. Now, take the notes of music ; put them on the staves of a tune-book, and number or letter them. How few they are comparatively. But just think how they also have been and may be alternated ; or, as they say about church-bells, how many changes may be rung or uttered FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 156 on them. All the human voices that have been heard in the world since the first uttered a sound ; all the voices of church-bells that have spoken in Sunday hours to the na- tions; all the drums that have been beaten, all the trumpets, bugles and fifes that have been blown in the fields or in the camps of soldiers ; all the songs that have been sung in cathedral, church, and chapel, or by the firesides of a million homes ; all the birds of different lands that have warbled in the air or twittered under the eaves, all the lowing cattle and bleating sheep, and buzzing bees and Hies, and the softest whirr of the humming-bird's wing ; — all these have drawn their songs or their utterances from these few musical notes, just as the flowers have drawn their tints from the sevencolours of the rainbow. But what are all the changes painted on " the bridge of colours seven," or played upon all the musical notes of the gamut, compared with the changes written out on the twenty-six letters of our alphabet ? Just think of it. There are nearly ninety thousand words in the English language made out of these changes. They have furnished a word for every thought and wish that ever lived in the heart of man or came to his lips in speech ; for every thing that was ever said, done or felt by all the genera- tions of men from Adam down to the last child born into the world. I wish I had power to tell what they have (lone and can do ; but I never had it and never can get it. Every little baby that has opened its blue, bead eyes in its cradle and looked up into its mother's, dropping the light of her love upon its face, has put two or three letters of the alphabet together in a word that had a sweet and beautiful meaning to her, though she could not find it in the dictionary. Then in later years when that child be- gan to put more letters into words, and began to play by day and dream by night, and see strange sights, and hear strange voices in its dreams, it could catch even its mid- night thoughts with the net of the alphabet, and show them to its parents next morning at table, showing them 150 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. the very tracks its mind made on -the hill-sides and in the pleasant valleys of dreamland. Some one has said that speech is the rainbow of reason, and he thought he had said a very clever thing ; but there is more in the alphabet than a hundred rainbovv^s. Think what the great kings of speech, the poets, have done with our twenty-six letters. What wonderful flights their minds have made, soaring up, and up, and far off in the great and holy fields where the angels fly, then down again among the coral groves of the broad blue ocean. How their thoughts have dashed and flashed, like humming- birds of lightning, into these heights and depths ! But the lightning cannot do what their thoughts did : its path- way through the heavens almost blinds the eye by its brightness, but in a second it is gone out of sight forever. But the pathway of the poet's thoughts, that fly far higher, deeper, and further than lightning's travel, lasts, brightens and widens for centuries. Think of the track that Mil- ton's thoughts made and left ; what broad, bright paths Tennyson and Browning, and Longfellow, and other living poets have made ! There are already eighty millions of men, women and children on the earth who speak the English tongue. How many of these millions have fol- lowed these paths through all their windings, and traced out the footprints of the poet's mind in a hundred beau- tiful fields, some basking in the bright lands beyond Time's river, in fields all splendid with the morning glor- ies and forget-me-nots of immortality ! And these foot- prints and footpaths will never fade away. In days that are to come, when half the population of the globe shall speak the English language, a thousand will follow those thought-tracks where a hundred seek for them now. But think of this and believe it : All the poets, and all the great kings, lords and priests of human speech, and all the mighty men who have lived upon the earth and said great words, and thought out great thoughts, and done great deeds, would have left us no more footprints than FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 157 if thoy had walked upon the water, had it not l)een for the alphabet and the words it makes for thoughts and acts. Even the great nations of old, marching on by twos and threes, each with a million feet all keeping step, would not have left a pathway we could have traced had it not been for our tv/enty-six letters. What a work they have done for the world already ! If they had done nothing more or else than to put in words that shall live forever all that our Heavenly Father has said and done for mankind in the Bible, it would have been a work worthy all the wisdom and power of His great angels to have invented them if man could not have done it alono. But just consider what the mighty Twenty - six are yet to do when half the population of the earth shall think and speak in English ; when Japanese orators, and Chinese statesmen, and woolly -headed poets of Central Africa, shall write books in it by the tens of thousands ; when Siberian boys and Polynesian girls shall dream, and tell their dreams in it, and wish each other "A merry Christmas " in it, and get Christmas books in it ; when its Sunday hymns shall make the round of the great globe, making a Sabbath-day's journey with the sun from island to island and from continent to continent. But the power of the English alphabet is too high, too deep and wide for me : I cannot reach it in thought, so I give it up. But if our English alphabet has been, and is to be, such a power in the world, it is the simplest and easiest one to be learned by children that wa'^ ever made. In the first place, the letters differ from each other more distinctly. There are no two or three of them so alike in form that one almost needs a pair of spectacles to tell them apart, as in the case of many of the alphabets of Asia. Then they always stand separately in a word, with a space between them, and they are always the same in form, though the printers may make them differ in size. So English and American children have an easy time of it in getting them by heart, compared with some children in some parts of . 158 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. . Africa and Asia. For example, we will take the boy.s and girls of Abyssinia, and see how they have to tax theii' memories, to learn all the letters of the Ethiopic language, in which their books are written. Their alphabet, like ours, contains twenty -six letters, and these are all called consonants, like B, C, D, F, G, H. Well, as no one can pronounce one of these letters without putting an A, E, I, O, or (J, to it, the Abyssinians tack to every one of their twenty-six consonants an arm, foot, nose, or ear, which stands for one of the letters we call by the very odd name of vowels. Thus, every one of these twenty-six conson- ants comes out in seven different shapes or forms, and ail made by putting on an arm here, a shoe here, and short- ening a leg there, and by other changes. Thus there are actually 184 different letters in the Ethiopic Alphabet to commit to memory. I should reall}'' like to know how long the children in that country are in learning their A, B, C, or how long English and American children would be in learning theirs, if B, C, or D, fcc, should come out in seven different sliapes. Then there are several other alphabets, which come from the same mother, that have a singular way of scat- tering the vowels through their words. There is the grand old Hebrew, honoured of God above all human tongues, because He guided Moses' finger in writing the Ten Commandments in it on Mount Sinai, and in writing the ffrst books of the Bible in it. Then we have Arabic, with its fine pen-letters, which, when printed, makes the page of a book look like the page of a letter written with a crow-quill. Next is the Syriac, with shorter and plumper letters than the Arabic. Now these three alphabets differ • from the Ethiopic in a way that must be rather singular and puzzling to young beginners. Instead of their vowels being tacked to the consonants, they seem to be peppered over them, or under or between them, in little dots or motes, each of which stands for an a, e, i, o, or u. A whole page or line of words peppered in this way, looks FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 159 rather pretty, but it needs a sharp eye to make out all the letters of each syllable. Now no language in the world can get on without voivels, though the Welsh, Polish and a few others seem to make little account of them. No consonant can go alone. Its very n'^,me shows that it cannot be pronounced without the help of a vowel ; and why the consonants should be made so much of in the grand old language that Abraham, Moses and David spoke; why they should stand up, as large and as proud as life, in the front rank of Hebrew words, while the vowels, which alone gives them yoice, seem to be skulking about, like pigmy slaves, between or under their feet, is a matter for question and curiosity at first sight. But this is the way many of the most useful things in the world are treated. • ^ . : There is something very interesting in the life and liistory of the Hebre^v language. All who speak or read it believe in the God of the Bible, and believe Mahomet was an impostor. On the other hand, all the Turks, Arabs and Persians, who use the Arabic letters in making their words, are Mahommedans, and believe that that great de- ceiver was God's Messiah, or Prophet. As we travel eastward the alphabets grow more and more puzzling and difficult. Really one cannot help wondering how the children in those hot climates, which make people so sleepy and dull, could ever do more in all their school life than to learn all the letters which they nuist get by heart, as the saying is. There, for example, is the Sanskrit, which some take to be the mother of more languages than any other can boast. It is twice as bad as the Ethiopic in this respect. It has twice as many letters to begin with. Then the letter a follows every consonant, or is pronounced with it, without being written. Thus b is not only pronounced ha, but one unwritten a is part of the word to be formed. For example, bt. make Ijat ; ct. cat, &c. Therefore, two or three consonants can- not follow one after the other and be written out separa- 160 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. tely in a word, as in our 'phrase^ weight, spring, «Sz;c ; for if these consonants were written separately in Sanskrit, we should have paharase, weigahat and saparing. For this reason where two or three consonants come together in that language, they must be written in one cluster or monogram. Well, there are more than three hundred of these monograms, as they may really be called, in the Sanskrit, many of them not only standing for three, but for six letters each. There is one that makes all these when picked out by the eye — sh, th, x, ya. And this cluster of letters, perhaps, will only make half, or even one-fourth of a word. Just think of the spelling lessons and reading lessons the children of that country must be drilled in ; what a tangled wilderness of letters and syllables and words they must work their way through befere they can read the Bible or any good book in their language. There are about eighty different alphabets in the world, some of which have several different languages written in them ; but I hope and believe that our English letters will carry the day over them all. I have said that there are already about eighty millions of persons in Great Britain, America, Australia, and other countries, who speak the English language. But there are twice as many more who do not speak our language, but who use our alphabet in writing their words. The people of France, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy use it entirely, and most all the books and newspapers in Holland, Den- mark, Sweden, and Norway are printed in it. If the Gerinans would only exchange their ugly letters for it, we should have nearly all the living literature of the world in our own clear-faced and honest letters. Now, I have made a long talk on the A, B, C of different languages. Next time we will look into the way in which words are made and put together in different countries ; and I believe you will think that our English fashion is as much simpler and better than most of them FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 161 as our letters are plainer and truer than the alphabets they use. THE FORMATION OF WORDS At my last call, we had a little talk about the letters that people of different countries use for making their words. Perhaps some of our young friends got an idea or two about the different A. B. C's. of the world from that talk which they never thought of before. Well, suppose we have a short one together this time about luords. We saw what a wonderful invention an alphabet is. You have all read of Solomon's Temple, of St. Peter's at Rome, and of St. Paul's in London. I am sure every boy and girl of you has seen pictures of those great buildings. Many of you have seen the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, and I should rather guess that you think that the gi'andest building that ever man made. Now what the stone, tim- ber, iron and glass are to the Crystal Palace, the letters of the alphabet are to the building of a Language. The stone, timber, iron and glass are first made into blocks, beams, arches, braces and panes. Then these are all put in their places, and make the great Palace, which looks in the sun like a crown of diamonds for Nature to wear in her happiest days. Just so letters are made into blocks, beams, arches, braces and panes, called words. Then these are framed together and make a Crystal Palace, more glorious than the one at Sydenham ; and this Palace is called a language. And it is not a shell of a building : it is not merely outside wall, and roof, and tower. Our English word Palace contains a greater number and variety of beautiful things than you can find at Sydenham ; flowers of every tint that hold all their bloom, and breathe out their sweet odours from year to year; flowers that are several hundred years old. 1(12 'CHIPS FROM Many klocks. but as frosli and lovely as if they first opened to the sun yesterday. There are plants a thousand years old, full of delicious fragrance; trees older still, without a drjT^ leaf at their topmost bough ; trees of all the centu- ries down to last year's planting, bearing fruit of every flavour. Then there are thousands of birds among these trees, plants and flowers ; birds with golden wings and silver wings, and sweeter voices than the larks ; great strong, glorious wings, that take up children and go soai*- . ing and sailing with them half way to heaven, that they may see the pathways of the angels among the stars, and look down on the clouds. These, and other things with- out number, are found in our old English word Palace ; and they are called b}'- one name, Literature, just as all the beds, carpets, sofas, chairs, mirrors, pictures, and pianos of a grand house are called Furniture. And, what is more wonderful, not only the great building of this word Palace itself, but all it contains^ even the beautiful colouring of the glass, pillars and arches, are all made of our twenty- • six letters ! At our last sitting around the table, we spent the whole evening talking over the wonders of the Alphabet. It seemed to us the greatest thing man ever made ; and I even doubted if men ever did make it allalone, without help from higher wisdom. But what shall we say of a whole language ? Did man build the first that was spoken all alone ? If he did it must have taken him more than a thousand years, if he did nothing else, and worked six days a week, and sat up nights besides at making words and framing them into sentences and larger blocks and beams of speech. But, for one, I cannot believe he ever did it or could do it by himself. How could Adam have gone to work to make the language he and his wife spoke and taught to their children? Eve was never a little baby, with blue bead eyes and baby voice, any more than Adam was ever an infant boy of the same size and cradle. The Bible tells us they were made full-grown, or every- FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. J 63 l)ody thinks it tells us so and believes it. And Adam, it may be, was not a year older than his wife. He had no- body to talk to before she was made, unless it was to liis Creator, and if he talked to Him it must have been in a language that God Himself made — every word of it. If it did not come to him in this way, just fancy what an nwkward, painful CQudition the first husband and wife would have found themselves in when first introduced to each other! Suppose Adam had lived a year or two years all alone before Eve was created and given to him. He would have had no occasion to make or use a word in all that time. He might have learned to shout, whistle and make other noises at the beasts and l)irds ; but as for mak- ing a ivord, or uttering any special sound that had a parti- cular thought in it he wished some creature to understand just as he understood it, such a notion would never have entered his head. Well, fancy them standing face to face for the first time in that condition. His heart and eyes might be brimful of wonder, joy and love, but what kind of sounds, and how many different ones, could he have uttered to make her understand what he felt ? Just think of their walking arm in arm down the garden aisles of Eden, look- ing at the flowers and listening to the birds, without hav- ing a language already made and given to them by their Heavenly Father. How could they manage to give the rose its name, to look together at it, to breathe in its sweet breath, and then to utter a sound, some special ex- clamation, like Bo ! Hi ! Ru ! Le ! and then agree that that one and only sound oy utterance should always mean that one flower and nothing else ! And you must bear in mind that they would have no words already made for coming to this agreement. How many years do you think it would have taken them to give names to all the flowers even in a common cottage garden? Then there would be the birds to name that sang in the trees, and which had feathers as beautiful and as many-coloured as the leaves of the flowers. Then outside of the garden, 164 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. in the fields and forests, were hundreds of beasts of every size and shape ; and these were to have names tiiat should mean something, and not be mere exclamations. The lion must have a name which signified his strent^th and courage ; the great elephant must have a name v/ith a meaning which should fit his great bulk and sagacity ; and the camel one as proper for him ; and so on througli the whole line of four-footed creatures and creeping things. And he could never makeup all these different names un- til he had made words to signify the different dispositions, habits, strength, size, colour, skins and voices which these creatures had. So when, as we read in the Bible, God brought all these beasts and birds to Adam, " to see what he would call them," He must have first made and given to him a language, containing thousands of words, every one of them distinct from the other in sound and meaning. Therefore if m.an could make an alphabet all alone, I cannot see how he could ever have made a language by himself. He might change one after it was made, and might add to it many new words ; but T am fully convinc- ed that the first one spoken on earth was made and given to the first man by God Himself. At my next visit we will talk over the way by which different languages were made. WHERE LANGUAGES WERE MADE AND PERFECTED. When I first thought of having these short monthly talks with the children, I had no idea of making one on the letters and words of different languages. It was nil an accident that I have done this, for I fully intended to tell them lots of stories about what I have seen or haard on my walks and travels in different countries. But they FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. H>5 will remember that, in order to make them more at home with me RvS a story-teller than as a school-master, I just mentioned the fact that I was learning the A. B. C's of several different languages, just like any young boy. Then I went on to tell them something about those queer alpha- k'fs ; and then 1 could not stop very well without saying something about luords ; and now I feel that all I have said would be of no use unless I go on further and say something about the making of languages. So 1 fear that the young folks at home will take me for a school- master after all ; and if they do, it will spoil half the pleasure of my monthly visits. But still, I need not for- get that all the children I talk to attend school, or are getting their first lessons in spelling, reading, arithmetic and grammar at home. And there are none so hard to get as grammar lessons, for they are full of strange words, which no one uses when talking about anything else. A man would be laughed at if he should say, " I give you my verb of honour " or, " I signed my noun to that note." Then I should not wonder if half the boys and girls I meet from mcuth to month are beginning to study French and Latin. Some may be already in Greek, with their heads full of conjunctions and declensions, tenses, moods, voices, and all that sort of thing. So I may not be so far out of the way after all, in talking to them about letters, words, and languages. Perhaps I may interest them in rJieii* studies, and give them a helping hand over some ditch or difficulty now and then. There are manj- hundreds of different languages in the world, and probably not one quarter of them have ever been put in written words. The good missionaries have set more than a hundred of these strange languages to letters, just as people set poetry to music; and the first and only book printed in them is the Bible. And that is as it should be, for the Bible is to all othei' books what the sun is to the stars ; and when a language has in it the Bible, it will soon kindle up around it many beautiful stars, or books twinkling with paler light. 166 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. Now all the languages of the world that have books printed in them, or their words put in writing, were spoken perhaps for many hundred years before they had an A. B. C. made for them. That was the time w^hen there were no reading lessons nor spelling lessons for children to puz- zle their brains over. Thus a language changed very soon, so that a man who spoke it when a boy could hard- ly understand it when he heard it spoken in his old age at fifty miles from where he was born A French Mis- sionary who was sent out to the Huron Indians in Ameri- ca, in 1G20, says that among some of the tribes there, hardly one village spoke the same language as another ; that even two families of the same village did not speak exactly the ^ame language. This was not all, nor the worst : he states that their languages were changing daily, so that in a few years the same people spoke one altogether different from that which they spoke when young. In Central America matters have been found worse still. The Missionaries have sometimes made a dic- tionary of all the words used by a tribe of Indians, and in ten years their language has so changed that the dic- tionary has been found useless. This came from their wandering about in small squads, with no fixed abode either as a family or as a collection of families. I have already told you something about that remark- able language called the Sanskrit, and about its strange letters. Well, these letters are called the Devanagari al- phabet, which means the city of the gods. Sometimes it is called simply Nagari, or city alphabet. There is some- thing very interesting in this name, for the languages of all countries are made in cities, and never in small scat- tered villages in the country. No one can ever guess what the Hebrew language was until Jerusalem became a great and splendid city, with hundreds of learned scribes and doctors of the law. It is doubtful if the most learned scholar of the present day could read a verse in the first chapter of Genesis if it were given to him in the very FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 1(57 words and handwriting of Moses, So with the grand language of Greece, with all the splendid poetry, philosophy, and eloquent orations which it has given to the world. They had letters and wrote their lano-uao-e in them several hun- Jred years before they had a fixed language. While the Greeks were scattered about in little villages, at wide dis- tances from each other, they had more dialects than ever wore found in the counties of England. Not until Athens had become a great city, full of the most learned men of Greece, was their noble language brought to its perfection, to be changed no more. So it was with the Latin. Before Rome became a renowned city, v;ith its oratoi's, historians, and poets, the language was no more like that of Cicero, Virgil, or Horace, than tlie Lancashire dialect is like the language of Tennyson or Macaulay. It is difficult to get hold of specimens of Lat- in in the day of its infancy, but it is doubtful if any of you, who are now reading Virgil, could make any mean- ing out of them. Many of you may have seen specimens of the language spoken by peasants in different parts of France, and know how unlike the French of Paris it is. It is just so with the English. That is a London or city- made language ; and it was not made what it is now un- til the most learned and cultivated men and women in England had made London theii* home for life. \ou know how titles always " lead the fashions," as it is called. No fashion was ever got up in a country village. London and Paris, with their royal courts and high circles of so- ciety, always set the fashions for the best dresses worn by all the men, women, and children in the country. Just 80 do the great cities set the fashion as to language. They do up its toilette to suit the taste of kings, queens, and noble lords and ladies, and people of elegant habits of thought and life. So, not only was it necessary to contrive and make letters in which to write and fix the words of a language, hut equally necessary to have large cities in which the 168 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. language thus written should be pruned and trimmed and dressed up nicely for general use. I have said that all the languages of the world were spoken for centuries before letters were made to write their words in. Then it was several hundred years after these letters were first made and written with a quill or reed pen before they were put in type and printed. And through all these centuries there was a great deal of confusion about them. I think I have said that three-fourths of all the books in the world are printed with Roman or English letters, as we generally call them. And there is some reason to believe that our plain, simple, honest alphabet will be the only one used a few centuries hence. Already most of the literary countries have taken this Roman alphabet in writing their languages. First, we have England and both the American continents and all the British colonies over the globe that use our alphabet. Then there is France that turns out millions of newspapers and books in the same letters. Italy, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway and Sweden use them also for their literature. Now all these countries took those letters from Rome, as they found them in hundreds of Latin books in prose and poetry, such as Virgil, Horace, Cicero, and Caesar wrote. The Latin language was learned and spoken in these countries by all persons who pretended to any re- spectable education. Latin was the language of all the colleges in England, France, Spain, and other countries in Europe. Teachers and scholars in these different coun- tries read the same Latin books, and all the words of the language were written as their learned authors wrote them. And these teachers and scholars used the same letters in the same way in writing Latin words. But when they came to write English and French words in these very letters, they used them in all sorts of odd ways. One can hardly say which country treated them the worst. The English and French were harder upon them FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 169 by far than the Italians and Spaniards. In Latin eveiy letter had a chance of being heard in the pronunciation of a word. In Italian, the oldest daughter of the Latin, even justice is done to every letter; and in Spanish, too, they all stand upon a pretty even footing. But in Eng- lish and French some of them are treated most shabbily. A lialf-dozen or more will sometimes be called out to stand shoulder to shoulder in a word, and then only half of them will have any manner of notice taken of them in tlie pronunciation of the word. Just take the word dough, for instance, and see how the last three letters are treated ! They might as well have been left out altogether as to have been put at the end of that word. Not one of the tliree, nor altogether, receive a single lisp of sound when the word is uttered. Then sounds that scholars would have shuddered at in Latin words are given to those so fainiliaj- to us. Think what your Virgil would have said of a Latin word spe] t cough and pronounced cof, or spelt rough and pronounced ruf ! The French are worse still in treating some of the most respectable letters of the Roman alphabet in contemptuous silence. Woe to the hindmost letter in nearly all their words. It is of no manner of consequence, so they never give it any sound or I'berty to speak for itself. See how they treat four good and honest letters in the word aient in the command or request, qiCils aient, " let them have." Here are three letters called voiuels, or vocals, or voices. That is, each has a voice or sound of its own, and no consonant can open its lips without the help of an a, e, i, o, or u. Then besides the a, i, e, there are n, t in the word, and yet all the French make out of the five letters in sound is our simple long a in "pale." What do you think Cicero would have said to that ? But treating Roman letters with utter silence is only one of the abuses put upon them in different countries. The Spanish, in many of their words, turn the t into d ; as todo for totits. Now we cannot pronounce Spain, oi K 170 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. any other word beginning with s without half- whispering e in making the sound. The Spanish writes out and gives full utterance to this e which we suppress, and makes it a part of a word, as in EspaUa or cstado for status or state. Tlien b is used for v, as Hahana for Havana ; aurihar for arriver, or arrive. They serve c in the same manner, and write (joton for cotton. This different use of the same letters makes two different words of the same thing ; and this is the way that hundreds of words mean- ing just the same idea, are found in different languages, which, from their different spelling, have but little resem- blance to each other. For several hundred years one letter was used for another in England ; as I for J, and U for V ; and words were thus formed that children now would hardly understand, even when they stood for very fami- liar names, as lames, Dauid, &lc. It would be very diffi- cult to find out when our English w first came into use, and how it looked then. Now 11 looks like a double v. One cannot hel{) wondering how those who invented it could give its present sound to two u's. The French and several other languages always use two distinct letters in making the same sound as our w, or gu, as Guillaume for '• William." So you see we have here two different words though meaning just the same thing, only because one uses a different letter from the other. But all the abuses put upon the Latin or English let- ters are as nothing compared with the shocking wrongs which the Welsh have inflicted upon them. I sometimes think that the great Csesar, who invaded and conquered Britain, would have treated the Welsh more severely than he did if he could have foreseen how they would treat the Roman letters when they came to use them in writing their queer language. I do not know what kind of Latin books some of you are reading, dictionary in hand. Per- haps you are working your way into Csesar's Commen- taries. If so, what do you think he would have said or looked if one had presented to him a sample of the Welsh FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 171 langiia<^o written in his own noLle and lioncst lettoi'H, ( v'>vy one of Avhicli has its own distinct sound in Latin ? What, for example, would he have said to these two verses of the 2nd chapter of John ? "A'R trydydd dydd yr oedd priodas yn Cana Galilea ; a mam yr lesu oedd yno." Just see what an odd set-out of letters they have put into our thirds or Caesar's tertia, writing it " trydydd !" "And on the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee ; and the mother of Jesus was there." See how they treat that mother. It is niarnin this verse ; but see what it is in the 5th, where slie tells the servants, " Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it." "Ei fain ef a ddywedodd wrth y gwasanaethwyr, Beth bynag a ddy- wedo efe wrthych, gwnewch." \'ou see mamfi, or mama, becomes fain in this verse. This is one of the puzzles of this strange language. The same word may begin with an m in one line and an / in another, and changes worse still may happen to it in the course of a page. These changes, and the odd way in which they string conso- nants together, make the Welsh language the strangest that was ever written. I wish some one who speaks and loves it, would find out who first put its words in Eng- lish letters ; whether the men who did it ever read Latin words, and had any idea how the letters were pronounced in them which they jumbled together in such a queer fashion in Welsh words. But I have made too long a talk already on this mat- ter. In my next we will look into another part of it, which may be more interesting and useful to you. 172 CHIPS FROM MANf BLOCKS. WORDY LANGUAGES. In my last talk about some of the languages of Eastern countries which their children had to learn before they could converse with one another, or write to their friends, I spoke of the alphabets made for them to use. But the letters of those countries are very simple and few, and easily got by heart, compared with the words of the lan- guages that use them. It is bad enough to learn three or four hundred different letters, or twenty-six letters, every one of which is changed in a dozen different ways. But just think of the number of changes which some of those languages make in a single word, and what a task it must be for a boy or girl to be able to remember and use them in conversation. I have spoken of the Sanskrit as a language which I wondered how any children* in the world could learn. If you could see its strange letters, you would think it would take all the years between five and twenty-five to learn them. But the way they make and put together their words is stranger still, and you would think, at first sight, that it would take a fullgrown man ten years to learn enough of them to write a decent letter to a friend, or to make a conversation with him five minutes, long. For instance, there is the word hudh, sig- nifying to know. Well, that single word is changed in Tiiore than 1200 different ways by putting different let- ters at one end or the other of it I . Just, think for a mo- ment how you would get on in your compositions, if you had to write the single word know in 1200 different ways, in order to give all the meanings that belong to it ! The whole number of words in the English language falls but a little short of 100,000. Now, then, take only 1,000 Sanskrit verbs, which are probably not one-fourth of the number of them that belong to the language, and we nave, out of that thousand verbs, 1,200.000 differently spelt words to be committed to memory ! Remember, FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 173 these are only the words made out of verbs. But nearly every noun is spelt in fifteen or twenty diflferent ways to signify, what most of you understand, gender, number SLTidlcase. So, 5,000 Sanskrit nouns only will make 100,000 differently spelt words, or as many as there are in the whole English language ! Some of you may wonder how so manj?- changes may be played on one word, ps budh for example. I will, therefore, give you a sample of these changes made on that word. Budh, then, is what is called the root from which all these branch-words spring ; then they follow thus : Budh, to know ; bodhdmi, I know ; bodheyam, I may know ; bodhdni, let me know ; bobodhmi, I know repeat- edly ; bobudhyam, I may know repeatedly ; bobodhis- hartii, I wish to know ; bodhaycwii, I cause to know. Now, here is a sample of the 1200 words that grow out of the single root budh. Well might all the school-boys and school-girls of England, and Europe, too, rejoice that they have not to learn such a language, before they can read and enjoy books and talk with each other. But I have only given you a small peep at its difficulties. If they squeeze half a dozen letters into a ragged cluster which might be put inside of our O, they also stick half a dozen whole words together till they make a bar of them as long as a stick of candy. And in making this bar they do not put them together butt to butt, so that you can see where one joins the other, but they braid them together like a whip-lash. Here, for example, is one of their language-beams only three words in length : astvagnimahatniyani. To read this word-bar, we must break it up into three lengths in this way, and we will give a Latin word first for each length : astii, " esto," agni, "Agni ;" niahatniyani, " magnitas," or, " Let there be to Agni greatness." So I think you who are begin- ning to study Latin and French, and feel that they are hard enough to learn, will see what harder tasks thous- ands of children in eastern countries must have in learn- ing such languages as the Sanskrit. 174 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. I must next say a little abo"t the Greek, which per- haps scores of you will study some day, if you have not begun to do it already. It is one of the grandest lan- guages ever made and spoken. It grew up to its full power and wealth little by little from the rude speech of men who were as barbarous as any Indian tribes in North America. No one can ever tell how much the world owes to the books written in that language. The New Testament was first written in it, and it is probable that Jesus Christ spoke it on earth, and all his Apostles. The great poets, philosophers, orators, and historians of the old world put their grand thoughts in it ; and doubtless the last generations of men that people the earth will study and read those thoughts in it. Still, though it is easier and simpler than its mother or sister, the Sanskrit, you will find it will give your memories something to do when you come to study it. Its letters are simple, and easily distinguished one from the other ; and there are only twenty -four of them. But the changes it makes in a single word, in order to give its different meanings, are almost as many as the Sanskrit claims. For instance: one of your first exercises, when you come to it, will be to conjugate, as they call it, the verb Tt;7rTw, " I strike." Well, if you take the pains to count up all the changes made in that word to make it show the number, "persons, moods, tenses, and voices which it passes through, and points out, you will find the word spelt in more than 400 different ways, without counting the participles. Then there are full twenty participles to that single verb, and every one of them is spelt, on an average, fifteen differ- ent ways, to mark the cases, genders, SLwd numbers which may belong to it. So every regular verb in the Greek language, or every one like Tvttto), is a root which pro- duces a crop of 700 differently-spelt w^ords. Thus, only one thousand regular Greek verbs produce 700,000 words. You have all seen, I am sure, Webster's Great Dictionar_y , which is as large and as heavy as one of the youngest of you FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 175 can lift. Well, 1000 of these regular Greek verbs would make seven dictionaries as large as Webster's great work. Then a Greek adjective like KaXos, " fair," is changed or spelt in twenty different wajT's to express the different cases, genders, and numbers in which it may be used. Almost every noun is changed as many times ; so tha.t 1000, with an adjective to match every one of them, would make another book nearly as large as Webster's. Indeed, if all the verbs, nouns, and adjectives in the Greek lan- guage were written out in full, in ail their declensions and conjugaiiu'ivs, they vrculd make a library of books. But I do not think they were all ever written out, or even spoken in this way. Then why did the Greeks ever take a fancy to so many words ? you may ask. Why make two or three millions of them, when they did not need and did not use one in a hundred of them ? That is a fair question, and I do not wonder that you ask it. I will try to answer it at my next call ; but we must now say a few words about the Latin, which many of you are learning to read and understand. The Latin language was made after the Greek, as the Greek was made probably after the Sanskirt, which per- haps may be called the mother of one, and the grandmother of the other. And there was much improvement in each generation, in the matter of word-making, especially in the Latin over the Greek. Instead of having 700 changes as in the verb Tjttto), we have on.y about 100 in the Latin Amo; and instead of twenty panlciples as in one case, we do not have half a dozen, all counted, in the other. This is a great difference in favour of the Latiii, making it express all the Greek can do with one hundredth part of the words used, or held in reserve for use, in that language. The Italian may be taken for the eldest daughter of the Latin, and has a very strong natural resemblance to its mother. Then the French and Spanish were born a little later, and they all have much the same form as their parent, but in some respects are considerably simplified, so that you 176 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. can get acquainted with them much more easily. In our next conversation we will notice what these said changes for the better were, and how they were made. Before I wish you " good night," I must just say a word about a strange language that is spoken in a corner of Europe and Asia. I mean the Turkish. It is truly a strange speech in its shape, as are the people who speak and write it. The Turks, you have read, have been terri- able land-rovers and land-robbers in their day. They stole and nearly destroyed the most interesting countries in the Old. World. They took Jerusalem, the birth-place of the Christia.n religion, and Athens, the birth-place of civilization, and Cairo, and hundreds of other places where great men had lived, besides Constantinople. They plun- dered all these old and famous cities most shockingly, and shamefully abused the people who lived in them. 1 t they also plundered the languages of the countries th( 7 overran and subdued, and out of this plunder they mac ; a language for themselves, which is a strange medL y enough. It is something like the houses that some of their barbarous soldiers made out of the ruins of Grecian temples : a piece of delicately sculptured marble is put into the wall beside a dirty brick or a little black boulder from the field. Still, to my mind, it is a wonder how the Turks ever had the genius to make such a language as they use, even with such materials as they had. The way they cut, trim and joint Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew and Syriac words in order to build them into their language is truly wonderful. Their letters nearly all belong to the Arabic alphabet ; but their grammar they must have in- vented among themselves. There is one thing they have done, which none of the languages they robbed ever did or can do. No word in Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin was ever made to say so much as many a Turkish word does. Here are a few examples of what meanings these lang- uages can express in single words. Sanskrit : hodhayisJi- iyasthavi, " You two pray you may cause to know." FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 177 Greek : tuphthesesthon, " You two shall be struck." Latin: amaremini, " You would be loved." Turkish : sevindere' Jnnemek, " To be unable to cause to love one's self." This Turkish verb is only in the infinitive mood, and therefore not so long as it might be, nor meaning all the ideas that might be put into it. By adding a few letters we may lengthen the word, and add all the meaning that it can be made to express ; thus, sevindereJmiemeguimdan, " From my having been unable to cause to love myself." Now there is one Turkish word for you ! I do not think that any other language in the world can show one that ex- presses more meaning, or a greater number of ideas. You see it beats the Sanskrit ; the Sanskrit exceeds the Greek, and the Greek the Latin, in making long words and put- ting long meanings into them. It may interest you to see what a short root produces this long Turkish word, and what letters are added to it to give its different meanings. Now the root of the verb in all languages is the imperative mood, second person singular, and not the infinitive mood. Thus in English, love (til ou) is the root, not to love, for the to makes what may be called a verb-noun of " to love," which may be the nominative of a verb just like any other noun; as "to l'.)ve our neighbour is our duty." Thus the root is the shortest form of the verb in all languages. The long Turkish word I have given you comes from the root sev, " love thou." To put this in the infinitive, they add meh, making it sevniek, " to love," To give the verb a causative meaning, they insert dii' between the sev and mek, making it sevdirmek, " to cause to love." Then to convey the idea of inability to do a thing, they insert ehrae immediately after the root, which makes the word sevehmemel', " to be unable to love." To express the negative me is added to the root, as sevmemek, " not to love." To give it the reflec- tive meanings, as is done in Latin and French by .se, or self, they insert in as sevinnnek, " to love oneself." By in- serting ish they form the reciprocal, as sevishmek, " to love 178 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. one another." By inserting the negative me, we have sevish- nnemeh, " not to love one another." Let us now analyze the long word I have given you, sevindirehmemeguimdan: sev, love, in, self, dir, cause, ehme, unable, mek, to, or sign of infinitive ; thus sevindirehmemek. This infinitive is declined like a verbal noun, the k being softened +o g, to which is added the possessive uim, my, then dan is the case-ending equal to from. This completes the word, " From my having been unable to cause to love myself." I'think this example will show you how wonderfully Turk- ish words are made, and what genius it required to con- struct them, to make such a simple root as sev produce so many varied meanings. The Hungarian language is even more curious and sin- gular than the Turkish in its construction. Both must have been formed in Northern Asia, but while the Turkish borrowed more than half its words from the Tartar, Per- sian and Arabic, the Hungarian has scarcely a word that resembles one in any other language. Like the Turkish, it gives a wonderful variety of meanings to a verb by adding different letters to the root. As ver, " beat thou," ver-ni " to beat ; " ver-et-ni " to be beaten ;" ver-eget-ni, to beat frequently ; ver-int-ni, to beat a little ' ver-eked- ni, to beat each other ; ver-od-ni, to beat one's self against; ver-het-ni, to bo able to beat ; ver-eget-het-ni, to be able to beat frequently. There are many other meanings given to the verb by the insertion of letters in the same way. Then like the Sanskrit, it has one set of termina- tions for the transitive and another for the intransitive. Sans. : trans, bodhami, I know (him or it) ; intrans. bodhe, I know (that it is, &c.) Hung, trans, tatalons, I find (it) intrans, tatalok, I find (that it is). Thus, in both languages the transitive and intransitive have each its own special conjugation through all the moods, tenses and voices. * . .. But it is in the cases of nouns that the Hungarian dif- fers most from other languages. I have taken it for FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 179 granted that many of the school children I have been talking to have begun to study Latin, and have learnt the names of the cases of nouns, what they mean, and how they are formed. The ending letter or letters of the word stand for some preposition, as, of, in, from, kc. But the Hunp-«rian joins a full-made preposition to the noun, just as we would do if we wrote " house/rom, clnirch/o, riverin, reason/o?', homec/i, taMeupon, -pemvith," fee. Thus, templom&o?, from the church ; A'templom- han, into the church ; as asztalra, on the table ; A' bara- tomhoz, unto my friend ; anyamfo^, to my uncle. In this way all the prepositions are joined to nouns, each mak- ing its own case for it. In forming cases for personal pro- nouns, the preposition is prefixed instead of being joined to the end of the word, and the letters of the pronoun are transposed. Thus, instead of metol, from me, it is written toleia ; nekem, to me, instead of jnenek ; entem, for me, instead of meent ; velem, with me, &c. As I have said, the Hungarian is the strangest lang- uage in Europe. It seems to have no family relation to any other, and where it came from and where it was made and first spoken, is a mystery that no one has yet solved. We know that it must have come from Northern Asia, and that the people who spoke it there must have lived near the Tartars, Turks or other tribes of me'r. But they seem never to have borrowed a word from their neighbours, and now speak a language on the Danube which has no resemblance to any other in Europe or Asia. I have now endeavoured, as I promised at our last con- versation, to tell you the reason why the Sanskrit, Greek, Latin and other ancient languages made and used so many useless words, and how our good, simple, honest English contrived to say all that those languages ever knew or could ever express in one hundredth part of the words they employed. 180 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. WHAT AUXILIARY VERBS DO FOR LEARNERS. In the course of my last talk about some of the langua- ges of Eastern countries, which their children had to learn before they could converse with each other, or write to their schoolmates or friends at a distance, I promised to tell you, the next time I called, why the Sanskrit, Greek and Latin made and used so many words in their languages. For instance, there is the Sanskrit word hhud, " to know," with 1200 changes played upon it by adding letters to one end or the other of the root ; thus making 1200 differently-spelt words, and everyone of them signifying a different idea about Jcnoiuing. There we took the Greek work tutttw, " I strike," which many of you, I dare say, have been sadly perplexed and vexed with conjugating, or in chasing it through all its moods, tenses, voices, numbers, and persons. I suggested that you should count up all the changes made in it, and see if you did not find that it produced 700 differently-spelt words, including its twenty participles with their num- bers, genders, persons, and cases. You will notice that the Greek is not half so ivordy as the Sanskrit, nor the Latin half so wordy as the Greek ; for when you come to your old particular acquaintance, the Latin anio, " I love," you will find that there are hardly 150 changes made in it to express every shade of meaning that one can give to the verb. So you see the Latins did not use one-fourth the number of words that the Greeks made and used to express the same idea. Then as we come along down to the Italian, Spanish, French, German, and English, we find that these langua- ges become less and less wordy, according to their age. Now our English language is the youngest in the civilized world, and the noblest, too, to my mind. It ought to be the noblest, the richest and the simplest of all, not only because it is the youngest or latest made, but because it FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 181 is spoken, road or written by more millions than use any other tongue. Nor is this the only reason : the eighty millions of persons who speak it do not live altogether in one country, as the French mostly do, but half of them live in the western and the other half in the eastern hemisphere, and in all countries and climates of each. Now, if you will go to the Kew Gardens or to Regent's Park, you will see a wonderful variety of trees, plants, shrubs, flowers and grasses, which have been brought from every land on the globe by English botanists and travellers. They have to make a special climate and soil for some of them, or put them in a glass house kept as warm as their native air. Well, just in this way English- men, Americans and Australians, and all the men and women scattered over the face of the globe who speak our language, have transplanted into it words belonging to the languages of those countries in which they have re- sided. When they bring home an article of food or cloth- ing or ornament from India, Australia, Turkey or China, they bring its name with it, and that name is first intro- duced into the society of our old Eii.^;iish words a little suspiciously, as if one said, " Here is a foreigner ! set a mark upon him, and see how he behaves before you let him into the family circle." So at first they set this mark upon him, "sugar," and he wears that for a while ; then they write him sugar, and, improving on acquaintance, he is admitted into full fellowship with our household words as simply sugar, without any ear-marks or dots or black lines to denote his foreign parentage. Cotton, cof- fee, cinnamon, tea, tobacco, &c., are all introduced into our language in the same way. Well, although our English language has drawn so many words from other languages and countries, and although it contains more of them than were ever actually written or spoken in any other, yet all you will find in Web- ster's Great Dictionary will not number so many as are made out of 50 Sanskrit, 75 Greek, or 350 Latin regular 182 OHIPH FROM MANY BI.OCKS. verbs! Now, why is a!l this ? What is the reason of all this waste of words ? Why should it re([uire a small dicti<m- ary full of Sanskrit or Greek words to describe a fact or an idea which a dozen English words will fully express ? 1 promised to tell you the reason why ; and this is part of it : The Sanskrit and Greek make each a candlestick for nearly every word, but Latin is more sparing of its metal. I want to impress this idea on your minds ; so I will re- peat it. The Sanskrit manufactures and uses 1200 dif- ferent candlesticks to burn the single candle Bhud, " to know," in ; the Greeks uses 700 to burn the candle Tvtttu) in; and the Latin about 150 for burning ariio in. Now just see how our young English language manages the matter. It goes to work and makes a couple of dozen or so of plain, homely, honest candlesticks, called auxiliary verbs, or helping verbs, fitted for ten thousand different candles, of all shapes, colours and wicking. See what it does with the Latin word aino, to show all the differently coloured lights that it can possibly be made to give. It onlv alters the word in three or four different ways by slightly trimming it. It takes it first pure and simple, love, and fits it into any one of the auxiliary- verb candlesticks. If you wish its light to shine on to-day, or any thing you teel, do or think to-day, you merely stick it in the socket of the simple name of somebody, or something, or in a word that stands for such a name, generally called a personal pronoun, and you have " I love, thou lovest, he, she, or it loves, we love, you love, they love." Do you wish to have it shine on the past, then you take the very same candlesticks and just trim the candle to loved, and you have " I loved, we loved, they loved," and all you want. Do you wish to throw the light on the future, then you bring out half a dozen simple candlesticks, if there be half a dozen persons among you to use them, and the same candle that shone on to-day now shines on to-morrow without even picking or snuffing its wick : thus, " I shall love, thou shalt love. FlUESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 183 he shall love, we shall love, you shall love, they shall love." And these candlesticks are as simple as they can be, as well as few in number. Some are short, like those used for bed candles, such as : / •shall, I can, and 1 have. Then there is another set a little higher, or a two-story stick ; such as : / .shall he, I shall leave, k.c. Then we have the three-story candlesticks, for the mantel-piece or parlour table, such as : / shall have been, I shall have had, fee. Now with a few of these simple candlesticks, such as may all be set in a row on a common kitchen mantel- piece, we may burn all the verb-candles in the English language, w ith really only four slight alterations, as, love^ loves, lovest, loved, loving ; or, hate, hate^, hatest, hated, hathig. Then it comes to this : we burn as many different candles with a dozen candlesticks as the Sanskrit does with 1200, or as the Greek with 600, or the Latin with 150. So you see how many words we save in the matter of verbs. Let us now see how many thousands of words we also save in the matter, of what are called nouns, or the names of things or persons. Now, the Sanskrit, Greek and Latin do with these as they do with the verbs : as they have a different candlestick for every change in the verb, so they have a different case for every change in the noun. I will take it for granted that all of you attend school, and that all of you have studied the English grammar, at least, and know what case, number and person mean. Well, the Sanskrit has eight different cases and three numbers to every noun, so that their word ndma, or " name," is spelt in sixteen different ways. In Greek there are five cases and three numbers, or the singular, dual and plural, and to fit them all their noun logos, " speech," or " word," is spelt eleven different ways. The Latin has six cases and two numbers, and a noun like sermo is changed eight times. Now these changes are very great in. each of these languages, so that young beginners can hardly tell what the noun was before it was altered to tit 184 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS, a case. For instance, in Sanskrit we have ndma in the nominative case, singular, but it is ndmahhyam in the dative case dual, and ndmahhih in the instrumental case plural. So you see the vi^ord is sometimes doubled in length by these changes, and looks like a different thing altogether. Then see how the Greek word Kepsco " horn," is altered in different cases : nominative singulai", Kfpa^ ; genitive singular, Kcparof, ; genitive dual, KeparaoLv. Here are three changes in a Latin noun signifying an ox or cow ; Nominative singular, hos ; accusative singular' bovem ; dative plural, bobus. How unlike are the words bos and bobus ! Suppose all the nouns in the English language changed in that way, what a task it would be to remember thera in all their alterations ? But see how we got rid of all this trouble by a very simple plan. We have noticed how the Sanskrit, Greek and Latin make the candlestick and the candle both one piece in regard to their verbs, while we burn a great number of candles of different sorts, sizes, and colours in one candlestick. So also in regard to their nouns ; the pen and its holder or case is one piece like a quill with its feather end ; while we only have one pen-holder for a dozen different pens. These pen-holders are called prepositions, or little words placed before nouns to signify their condition or case, whatever it may be, without any change at all in their spelling. Here are a few of these noun-holders, or prepositions, and the way we use them : Noun, love ; holder, o/love, to love, in love, by love, /Vom love. Now with about a dozen of these simple noun-holders we can use all the nouns or names of things, ideas and feelings in the English language. In this way we get rid of the necessity of cramming into our memories thousands of words which those had to remember and use who spoke and wrote the Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and other ancient languages. The same is true in regard to adjectives, such as "good, fair, true, cold, white," and the like. The Latin changes bonus, " good," in fourteen different ways. FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 185 or, to look to, makes fourteen different words of it, in order to show its different cases, genders and numherSj The Greek changes KaAos, "fair" or "• beautiful," in tiventy-three different ways for the same purpose. The Sanskrit makes thirty-three differently-spelt words out of eka " one." Now we say and write good simply when we say good boy or good girls. So you will see what a multitude of words we save in the use of adjectives, when compared with the three languages I have mentioned. HEAD-SPRINGS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. At my last call, I said our English language is the youngest, simplest, richest, and best ever made. When I say that it is the youngest, I do not mean that the words in it are young, but that their framework, or the way in which they have been collected from all countries and put together into one grand building, which we called a Word-Palace, is young compared with other languages. You have all read or heard something about " discovering the sources of the Nile ; " how that bold men, for 2000 years and more, have tried to find out the lakes or springs which send forth the first streams that make tliat famous river. You have heard about Speke, and Grant, and Dr. Livingstone, and what they did and suffered to find out these head-springs. Well, there have been many Spekes and Grants who have tried to discover the sources of the English language. To do this, they have had to travel much further than from the mouth of the Nile to its highest head-spring. Long before our Saviour came into the world many of our most common woi'ds were spoken, perhaps, in the centre of Asia, by a wild, wandering people called the Qotlis. From Asia they moved west- ward, and overran nearly all Europe. You have read L 186 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. about them in your history -books. They were a terrible, savage sort of people, and spoke a language that sounded to the ears of the polished Romans, according to the Em- peror Julian, " like the wild screeching of birds of prey." They must have come out of Asia, and brought with them most of the words they spoke in Europe, and the candle- sticks and pen-holders in which they used those words, and which we use to this day, as we have noticed. Well, it is a beautiful fact, and I want you all to remember it, that the very fountain-head of the English language is the Gothic Bible. The first time these homely, honest words we use wei'e ever put into letters and written with a pen, was by a good and great man, a Gothic bishop, by name Ulfilas, about 1500 years ago, who first translated the Scriptures into that language. What the lakes that Speke and Grant discovered are to the Nile, this Bible of Ulfilas is to the river of the English language. All rivers have many branches, sometimes called effinents, because they run into the main trunk, not from it. Now, the German, the Dutch, Danish, Swedish and the old Anglo- Saxon are all ouishoots or effluents of the great river of speech that wells out of that old Gothic Bible. I cannot ■ show you what kind of letters the good bishop made or borrowed to write the great and holy words of the Gospel in. The letters of all languages were rather rude and scraggy in his day. But I want to have you begin at this fountain-head of all these five languages and follow the stream down to where we now stand. I hope you all know the Lord's Prayer by heart, so we will take this as Bishop Ulfilas put it in Gothic, and compare it with the same prayer as written in the branch languages we have mentioned. Atta unsar thu in himinam, veihnai Father ours thou in heaven, holy be namo thein. Kvimai thiudinassus name thine. Come Kingdom HRESJDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 187 theins. Vairthai vilja theins sve in thine. Be done will thine so in himina jah ana airthai. Hlaif unsarana heaven and on earth. Loaf ours gif uns himadag. Jah aflet uns give us this day. And afflet us thatei skulans sijaima svasve jah . that debtors are so as and veis afletam thaim skulam unsaraim we afflet to the debtors our. Jah ni briggais uns in fraistubrijai And not bring us into temptation, ak lausei uns af thamma ubilin but loose us from the evil i Now you will see, as we go on, that nearly every one of the words in this prayer, which was repeated by Goths nearly a hundred years before the Saxons came to England, may be found in the English language as it was spoken and written in the time of the great poet Chaucer. We will now look at the Lord's prayer as it was written in old Saxon in 700, or about 250 years after Bishop Ulfilas translated it into Gothic. Fader uren thu arth iu Theofnas, sio gehalgud Noma thin. To cymeth vie thin ; sic villo thin suse is in Theofne and in Eortha. Rlaf ufevne ofervistlic sel us to daeg. And forgef us scylda urna suae ve forgefon scylgum urum. And ne iulad us in costnunge, ak gefri us from evil. Now after the Saxons had lived in England several hundred years, and had divided it up into seven king- doms, the Danes came in and made a great deal of trouble, and finally got the mastery, and set up a Danish King over the whole country. Their language was one of the 188 ; CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. effluents or tributaries to the English, and it also took its rise in the Gothic. Here is the Lord's prayer in the. Danish, as it was written perhaps two or three hundred years after the Saxon I have given. Fader vor du som est in himmelen ; Hellig wonde dit naffn. Til Komme dit rige. Bordedin billie, saa paa jorden som hand er i himmelen. Giff oz i dag vort daylige brod 00 forlad oz skyld som wi forlade vore skuldener 00, leed oz icke in f ristelse. Men f rels oz f ra ont. About the same time that the Danes came in great numbers to England, they and the Norwegians sent out expeditions to Iceland, that settled in that northern island, the half-way house on the road to Greenland. These Icelanders became a very intelligent, active read- ing people, and kept the language they carried with them unchanged. Here is the Lord's Prayer as they wrote it, which you can easily compare with the Danish. Fader vor thu som ert a himnum, helgest thitt nafn ; tilkome thitt riike ; verde thinn ville, so a jordu sem a himne ; gieff thu OSS i dag vort daglegt braud ; og f orgeifF os vorar skulder, so som vier fiergiefum vorum skuldinautum ; og inleid oss ecke i friesUie, heldr frelso thu OSS fra illu. We now come to the Lord's Prayer in English as it was written in 1380, in Chauncey's time, and you will see that it differs about as much from the words you repeat as the Danish differs from the Icelandic. Oure Fadir that art in Hevenes, halowid be thi name. Thy kingdom come to. Be thi FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 189 Will doon in erthe as in hevene. Geve to us this dai our breed. And forgive us our dettis, as we forgiven to our dettouris. And lead us not into Temptacionn but deliver us from yvel. Now you who have studied Latin and French will notice that all the words in this prayer are from the Gothic stock except two, or deliver and temptation. And the great and good Wycliffe translated it into English several hundred years after the Normans had established their rule and tried to establish their language in Eng- land. So you see the English stuck to their old, homely, honest Saxon, in spite of William the Conqueror, and all the Norman courtiers, nobles, bishops and priests. We will now glance at two or three other branches of that Gothic head-spring of all that are called Teutonic lan- guages. In German it is written thus : Unser vater, der du bist in Himmel, geheiliget werd dein Name. Zukomme dein Reich, Dein Wille geschehe, wie in Himmel also auch auf Erden. Unsern taglich brodt gib uns heute. • Und vergib uns unser schuld, als wir vergeben unsern schuldigern. Und fuhre uns niet in versuchung. Soudern erlose uns von. dem bosen. t.' Compare this with the same prayer in what is called Low Dutch, as spoken by the people of Holland or Hol- lowland. The specimen given is not one of the earliest, but will serve to show the difference between the two Teutonic dialects. Onse vader, die in de hemelin zyn, uwen naam worde gehey light ; uw Koningryk 190 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS, Kome : uwe wille geschiede gelyck in den hemel zoo ook op den arden ; ons dagelicks broot geef ons heeden, end vergeeft onse schulden gelyck ook wy vergeeven onsen schuldenaaren ; end enlaat ons neet in versoerking, maer verlost ons van der boosen. Here is a specimen of the dialect spoken in early times by the people of Friesland, a country that joins Holland on the north-east. You will notice that their word Haita is nearly the same as the Gothic word for father. Ws H lita duu derstu yne hymil, dyn name wird hoi light ; dyn ryck tokome ; dyn wille moet schoen, opt yrtryck as yne hymil. Ws deilix broe jov ws juved ; in verjon ws ws schylden as wy vergoe ws Schyldenis. Tu lied ws noet in versieking : Din fry ws vin it quaed. With a specimen of the Swedish, we will close these examples of Teutonic languages, of which the first put in written words was the Gothic. Fader war som ast i himmelen, helgadt warde titt namn ; tilkomme titt rike ; ske tin wilje sasom i himmelen, sa ock pa jorden ; gif oss i dag wart dageliga brod : och forlat oss wara skulder, sasom och wi forlade tliem oss skyldige aro ; och inled oss icke i frestelse, utan frals oss ifran ondo. I now suspend these long talks on the languages, and their peculiarities of construction. And as the noble English language we speak, and in which more prayers have been said and hymns sung than in any other ever FIRESIDE TALKS WITH SCHOOL CHILDREN. 191 spoken, saw its first words written in the Lord's Prayer, I think we do well to close this subject with that beau- tiful petition, which has been t^u,nslated into more than one hundred and fifty of the languages spoken on the earth. CHAPTEE VI. EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. ELEMENTS AND GROWTH OF TALENT. ELEMENTS AND GROWTH OF TALENT— HISTORY AND MISSION OF ARCHITEC- TURE — THE SECTARIAN QUESTION. ;HE capacities or faculties which enable men to im- press their character deeply and lastingly upon their age, country or their own community, are generally called talents. We hear and read much of men of com- manding talents, of brilliant talents, and such men are held up to our homage and admiration; and, as any taste or appetite grows by what it feeds upon, so, in many cases, such extraordinary talents grow by the very admiration and homage that they win and feed upon. But the most useful men in every community are men of ordinary talents, who have the heart to use them to their best capacity for the common good. The best, purest, happiest communities are made up of men of common talents, who employ them as did the boiTOwers in the Scripture parable, whom our Saviour held up as examples for imitation. In the brightest nights we see, few planets meet our eyes, while the heavens are full of the soft and even light of common stars. It is doubtful if the term, talents, was ever ap- plied to intellectual faculties before our Saviour employed it in the parable referred to. It is a term scarcely ever understood and used in its literal meaning. A talent, in Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit, means something lifted in one scale by a certain weight in the other. Materially, it means a weighing of gold, silver or brass. Metaphori- EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 193 cally it means a certain intellectual force weighed off to a person, which he is, or ought, to make the best use of for his own good and the good of others. This talent is never weighed off to an individual alone, as a solitary allotment. There are always other things put in the same scale with it, to enable the receiver to develop it and use it to the best advantage. What these things are, may be measured by parallels in what is called the physi- cal or natural world. The phenomena of nature are al- ways before us through the whole long year. We are all familiar with them, and they teach us by beautiful and truthful illustrations the system that obtains and rules in the moral world. Now, when we speak of nature, we do not mean a soli- tary fact, or merely the existence, the size or solidity of the globe, but we speak of it as that everlasting form or force of vitality which produces the different climates and seasons ; which clothes the earth with beauty ; which fills all its veins with the pulse of happy life ; which covers it with the green glories of spring and the golden glories of summer harvests ; which perfumes it with flow- ers, gives it the music of birds and the music of running streams in the same key of gladness ; which gilds it with gold of the morning dawn, and hangs it at evening with purple drapery of the sunset clouds. All this is nature in its work on the earth we inhabit. And from begin- ning to end it is a work. It is the result of an infinite variety of forces brought to bear upon the surface of our globe. Without these forces this earth of ours would be as cold, barren and bald as a rock — as a desert void of any form of vegetable or animal life. There would be no such" thing as nature in the sense we give to that term. But every one of these forces which give such life and beauty to our earth comes from, or is put in action by, a power ninety millions of mih distant from us. The sun is one of the thousands of God's viceroys through which and by which he governs his material universe to its min- 194 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. utest detail of life and motion by laws he has cHtabli.shod to act " without variableness or shadow of turning " for evei. The earth which we are so tempted to think the sum and substance of his creation, is only one of the smaller prov- inces which he has placed in the vice-regency of the sun, a solar empire called our planetary system. What wo call nature, in the sense of vitality and action, is only the sun's immediate work for us. It is the sun as God's vicegerent in our physical world, that unfolds the leaf of every tree, tints and perfumes every flower, clothes every field with green or gold ; distils every drop of rain or dew, and gives to us every ray of light and every breath of air. Im a word, our earth lives and moves and has its breath and being, under God, in the sun, just as our spirit- ual nature lives and moves, and has its being in hi.n through his own almighty Son who took and wore our humanity. Let us, then, go to this administration of what we call nature for a few plain and instructive parallels to the economy of Divine Providence in fitting every man to be useful and happy in this life, and to make him valuable to the whole community. Take, as only one example, a field of wheat, in which a million of seed-grains have been sown, Now, nature has given to each particular grain a talent for growth and production. And in giving this talent it has weighed off something more than a handful of soil for its rootage. The grain must have something more than mere soil, however soft and rich it may be. And nature, mindful of this necessity, weighs off to it in her generous scales all these other things it needs in order to " put forth the blade, then the ear, and then the full com in the ear." It needs to this end a thousand varying circumstances and influences. It needs light and heat in all their spring and summer gradations. It needs morning air, noon air and night air. It needs darkness as well as light in regular alternations. It needs rain and dew, gases of varying temperature, electricity, EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 105 and all the chemical processes which solar heat produces in the soil beneath and in the air above it. It is the hai'nionious co-operation of all these elements, influ- ences and opportunities that brings up that grain of wheat through the blade to its golden harvest. This is the way that God through nature bestows a talent for growth on every grain of wheat, on every seed of tree, plant and flower on the face of the earth. This is the way that nature fills her scales when she weighs off her talents to all the individuals and races of her vegetable kingdom. ^ Now, no teacher of mankind ever went so frequently to nature for analogies or parallels as Christ himself did to illustrate the laws, facts and forces of the moral and spiritual world. It was from his own lips after referring to these analogies, that the question comes to us : " If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith." We have seen how the most common grass and grain of the fields are clothed. We have seen the elaborate and careful process by which they are so clothed ; the elements, forces and influences employed in procuring for every plant, tree, leaf and flower its own peculiar garments. Well might the Sa- viour of the world express surprise that any person who believed in him could have so little faith as to think that God had not made as ample provisions for the culture of his moral and spiritual natures as for the well-being iind end of the vegetable creation. But there is reason to fear that nine in ten in every community are men and women of this little faith in the talent which God has given them, and the forces, influences and opportunities which he has given them with that talent to foster, train and develop it, and make it a power for the good of others, and for their own happiness here and hereafter. And I believe that this little faith comes mostly from fixing their eyes upon the smallness of the gi'ain and the hand- 196 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. ful of soil which they see in the scales at the weighing of providence in their favour. Now this lack of sight and lack of faith are not only unfortunate b':it ungrateful in them, weakening their lives for usefulness, and depriving them of its enjoyment. Providence never weighs off a talent without those forces, influences and opportunities which it needs for its development, any more than nature weighs off" to a grain of wheat a pound of soil without adding to it light and heat, rain and dew, and all the other influences it needs for its gi'owth and fruitage. Let us see what is implied in the question of the great Master : " How much more will he clothe you, ye of little faith ? " How much more ? that is the question ; wherein do the parallels fail ? How does God make greater provision for the culture of the human mind and soul than for the culture of the grain and grass of the field ? Here are two or three very essential diff'erences to begin with. The grain of wheat cannot choose or change its soil. It cannot arise out of its place and plant itself on the bald rock, or in the deep, rich soil of a dis- tant field. It cannot choose or change its companions. It must grow up by their side and feed upon their food from the blade to the full corn in the ear. How different is this from the growth of human character ! When a man has received his talent he may go and bury it in the earth, or go and put it under the best influences to stimu- late its development. It may not only grow by what it feeds upon, but it may create or choose its own food. In a practical sense, it may create the forces and influences necessary to its best culture. More than this : it may create its own times and seasons for growth. Thousands of men in different walks oi life have done this very thing. By taking a single step to the right or left, they have put themselves on the line of new opportunities and impulses, which would not have come in their way but for that first step aside from their old track. When a young man steps out into active life, the difference between going EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 197 into a drinking saloon on one hand and a reading room on the other, the choice of a comrade or the choice of a book, may shape his character for this world and the world to come. Whichever way he resolves to go, he will find the doors of opportunity open before him, one after the other, up to the very gate of heaven, or to the very dungeon of outer darkness, sin and misery. I believe that thousands of young men make a practical failure of their lives from their littleness of faith in the talent given them for usefulness. It seems so small to them that they do as the man in the parable did : they tie it up in a napkin or bury it in the earth. Now the author of that parable tells us that a grain of mustard- seed is very small, but that it has a wonderful capacity of growth and expansion. The largest oak that ever grew came from a single acorn, says the cradle-proverb. But another misconception has been, perhaps, more detrimen- tal still to young men when starting in life. They mis- apprehend the meaning of the word talent. They limit it to a single faculty. They regard it as exclusively an intellectual force, pure and simple, an abstract mental gift bestowed as a special gift upon a certain number of men and women, distinguishing them from the rest of the com- munity. Now I have frequently referred to the literal meaning of talent, that not one of those whom these lines may reach will ever hear or read that word without see- ing before his eyes a pair of scales, and the hand that holds them and fills them for him ; in short, that the word talent will suggest only something weighed off to him and others like him ; a weighing of gola, of silver, or of any other value. A talent is any capacity which one may cultivate and use for his own good, and the good of those around him. It may be only a taste for the beautiful in nature and art. It may be only a capacity to appreciate and enjoy what is noble, pure and good in human character. It may be a single, steady thought of the heart fixed upon the attainment of some coveted ob- 198 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. ject. It may be a hope that fastens its clear and sleepless eyes on some futiirf^ that looks like heaven to it. It may be a faith, a will, or resolute purpose. And whichever of these it may be,, it may create its own intellectual force ; it may open the successive doors of opportunity by vio- lence, to use the term of our Saviour employed in regard to the kingdom of heaven. Every civilized community presents examples of this kind ; examples of men and wo- men who have made the veriest mustard-seed of intellect grow by the sheer force of will to be a great, branching tree, bearing healthy foliage and fruit for the public good. Where one such example finds its way into written his- tory, a thousand live in the memory or character of as many towns and villages in Christendom. One of these examples has made a history which will go down to all coming time. It is that of the blacksmith's apprentice of Antwerp, who fell in love with the beautiful daughter of a distinguished painter, and made her the idol of his hopes and aspirations. What man dare do he would do and dare for her. Set the standard at any height that man might reach, and he would climb to it for her. Her father, wearied with his importunate suit, set up the standard on a height which he believed the young man would never attempt to reach. He was just putting the last touch to one of his master-pieces. Pointing to the can- vas, he said in pride and scorn, " Young man, when you can paint a piece to equal that, you may have my daugh- ter." The young man took him at his word. He went back to his anvil, and from that to his garret day by day, with one gi'eat, brave purpose in his soul. He had no talent nor genius for painting. But the great sentiment aglow in his heart by night and day created both talent and genius. It gave to his eye exquisite perceptions of form, symmetry and beauty. It gave to his hard rough hand, a touch, a sense of delicacy, which a Correggio or a Murillo might envy. Nature took him by the hand and taught him the secrets of her pencil. The love and hand EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 199 of the artist's daughter were his kingdom of heaven, and the young man took it by violence. And the painting by which he won the heaven of his earthly hope and aspira- tion, is the ])roudest thing that old Antwerp has shown to the world for centuries. HISTORY AND MISSION OF ARCHITECTURE. No intellectual taste or force has exerted such a shaping influence upon civilization as architecture. This art o[)ened up and handed down a normal school for all ages and races of mankind, in which their perceptions of beauty and ideals of luxury and happy life were educated from stage to stage of refinement. It is truly the mother of all the other arts, and embraces them all in its own development. It links the ages together more continu- ously than any other human capacit}" or attainment. In links two thousand years long, the chain of its history comes down to the latest and grandest edifice built on earth from the foundation-stone of Cain's little city under the breaking dawn of historic time. Through the flood it comes ; for the waters that covered the earth did not drown a single art or thought worth anything to man, that lived before their deluge. The best antediluvian house Noah carried fresh in his memory ; and in his ark he tested on the flood, and transferred to all mankind to he the first conception and model of the floating architec- ture of the sea. From his day to this, the human race has chronicled its ages and stages of progress in this hand- writing of Tubalcain's iron pens in wood,jbrick, and stone. These have been the most instructive and endur- ing syllables that man has writen upon the earth. Every village or hamlet built for permanent residence has been a paragrapli in his history, translated into every language. 200 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. The migratory tent of skins or cloth had no civilizing power. It did not attach a single human heart to the earth on which it was planted for the night, or week, or month. It put forth no spores nor tendrils of home to localize life and its enjoyments, hopes, and affections to one permanent centre of action and experience. As the rolling stone gathers no moss, so the moving tent could not gather nor leave any of the rime or radiance of civili- zation. It was not until the moi*e intelligent families of mankind began to plant themselves by communities in houses of wood, brick, or stone, which they could not re- move, that home-life and social intercourse and fellow- ship, could put forth those feeble, primitive germs of taste and genius that have been developed into the brilliant culture of the present day. The progress of architecture will make one of the most interesting studies in the world to a mind given to his- torical predilections. One does not need to adopt any portion of the Darwinian system, nor to lower the start- ing-point of the human race, in recognising what they owed to the example and instruction of beasts, birds, fish, and inanimate nature in learning all the arts that have come to their present perfection. The inverted bird's nest evidently served as the first suggestion and model of the first conical tent or hut. Caves or holes in the brows of rocky hills or mountains, partially improved by wild beasts, supplied the models for houses of stone. The fish with tail and fins, and fitness of its shape for swift and easy movement in the water, suggested the best fashion- ing and faculties of a vessel with rudder and oars. When the great row-galley was found heavy pulling for men's sinews alone, the eagle or the dove dropt its suggestion into the human mind, and two or three canvas wings were given to the vessel, and the wind was caught aiid tamed and harnessed to it, like a horse broken to the shafts. Now, Darwin " to the contrary notwithstanding," it does not lower the dignity of man's origin nor of the dawn of EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 201 his intellect, that he learned so much of beasts, birds, and fish. While he had to put his thoughts to the school of instinct, taught by these lower creatures, he was not a whit nearer the ape in his capacity of mental progress than at this hour. If any monkeys existed before the flood, they knew as much then as the best of their race know now. The antediluvian birds built them as perfect houses as their posterity build now. They spoke the same language and sang the same tunes as we hear in our treetops. Nor is it any discredit to man's intellect that he had to work slower by reason than his first teacher, the beasts and birds, worked by instinct. He had to adopt their ready-made models by the apposition of thought to thought. It cost him a more strenuous mental exercise still to improve on those models, and to improve on his own improvements, to use the terms common to modern inventions. But slow as was his progress, it was sure and ceaseless. Men have died on the long march of human life, and marked it out into short stages with their graves as mile-stones. But man has never died since Adam was set a living soul on the earth. As a being with such a soul, he has lived from that day to this, and will live as long as the earth exists. The graves of a hundred gener- ations, the wrecks and rubbish of fallen empires, and all the thick-strewn mortalities that choke the pathway of nations, have not broken the continuity of his existence and progress as a being with a living soul in him. If a single individual of the race had lived through all the thousands of years since Adam's death, and if he carried in his mind all that mankind have learned within the space, he could not impart to us any science, art, taste, knowledge, or genius that we do not now possess. The progress of all these faculties of perception and execution has been as continuous as if the earth never took to it-s bosom a human grave. », Sacred history is the oldest as well as the most autheu- U 202 CHIPS FEOM MANY BLOCKS. tic record that we have of the progress of architecture, and of all the other arts. It gives us more detailed ac- count of their development and application than perhlips all other ancient histories put together. It invests each and all with a dignity which no other liistories ascribe to them. It gives them a divine origin or inspiration. It was God who " made coats of skins " for Adam and Eve. It was God who gave to Noah the model of the ark, and every minute detail of its structure, even to pitching it, when finished to make it watertight. It was God who inspired the builders of the tabernacle, and " filled them with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning work, to work in gold, and in silver, and in brass, and in cutting of stones to set them, and in carving of timber to work in all manner of workmanship." Here we have tht; earliest and fullest record of the mechanic arts, and of that higher artistry of genius and taste that ministers to our perceptions and enjoyment of beauty. Here they are all put on the same footing of divinity in their inspira- tion. The mechanics or artists had to be " filled with the spirit of God " before they could design and execute these fine works in gold, silver, brass and wood. Neither The Manufacturer and Builder, nor any other magazine devoted to the useful or fine arts, ever described a work to such minute detail of design and material as Moses gives us in the construction of the tabernacle. Nothing can be more evident than the fact, that this work in the wilder- ness did not only include all the progress in these arts made by the human race up to that time, but that it was a long step in advance of that progress ; that it far exceeded, in every conception and execution of beauty, any work ac- complished in Egypt or Assyria, or in any other region of early civilization. It is a fact which all thoughtful mechanics and artists should notice with special interest, that the Bible is the only book, of ancient date, that does any justice to the EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 203 professions, occupations, and genius which they represent. It is full of minute and scientific descriptions of architec- ture and works of art, taste, and genius. Indeed, there is hardly a human life, from Genesis to Revelation given us in such clear, consecutive, and full biography as even the construction of the little tabernacle and ark of the testimony made under the supervision of Moses. It is doubtful if all the literature that Greece devoted to science and art would furnish us with such a list of materials as were wrought into these works by Bezaleel and Aholiab, who were "Jilled with the spirit of God," in producing from them such a master-piece as no Grecian artist ever accomplished in the day of Pericles. While doing honour to all the other arts and occupations, archi- tecture seems to be the specialty of human attainments to the Bible. From beginning to end, it dwells upon its achievements and progress, and shows how God not only admits but claims both as the direct work of his own in- spiration. The making of the first suit of clothes for man ; the building of the ark under Noah ; of the taber- nacle under Moses ; of the temple under Solomon — all these progressive steps in the arts, he teaches man to take, guiding his feet and holding his hand, and giving it skill of touch. No Grecian nor Roman poets ever sung of architecture in such lofty strains, or drew from it such sublime figures for their rhetoric, as Job and John of Patmos, and other old Hebrew seers and saints. If the artists, mechanics, and builders of this country and age would like to see the fullest history of their several arts and trades in the first forty centuries ; or if they would know when and by whom these arts and trades were most highly honoured, they must go to the Bible, where they will find more on both branches of the subject than in any other volume in the world. 204 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. ; THE SECTARIAN QUESTION. There seems to be a remarkable and almost universal misapprehension of the term sectarian, as applied to the educational question between Protestants and Catholics in this country ; and, as a Protestant of very decided con- victions, I would respectfully and deferentially suggest a few thoughts and facts for the consideration of candid men of the same mind. I believe the Protestant faith and cause are strong enough to render it safe, as well as just, to admit certain facts, historical and concurient, which it is not necessary to dispute or to ignore. First of these is the fact that all the professed or nomi- nal Christians in the world are divided into two rigidly distinct bodies — Protestant and Catholic, the latter em- bracing the Roman and Greek Churches. Surely this fact must be evident and admitted by all who consider the subject. Then, neither Protestant nor Catholics are, or ought to be, called a sect. They are the two great divisions of the Christian Church, opposed to each other front to front and flank to flank in every c.ause or ques- tion of difference. The whole of Protestantism is as com- pactly opposed to Catholicism as if it had never been sub-divided into various branches, or as if it had been from the beginning one concentrated body, under one single indivisible name, as Lutheran or Calvin. Therefore, neither of these two great bodies or branches of the Christian world can be called a sect in the sense common use gives to that term; nor can any form or cause of antagonism between them be called sectarian, but divi- sional. We cannot fairly put the Catholics on the same footing as one of the many sects of the Protestant division. We cannot offset them against the Methodists, Baptists, Preabyterians, Congregationalists, or Episcopalians. To repeat the military figure, we must place or recognise them centre to centre and flank to flank to the whole EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 205 Protestant line, whatever flags or names its diversified sections may bear. Perhaps the relative positions of these two great divi- sions of the Christian world, may be best illustrated by a parallel in the political history of this country. One hundred years ago there were about three millions of British subjects on this part of the continent, settled in thirteen different sections, called colonies, each with its own distinctive name. For some time they had been complaining bitterly and justly of the usurpations, exac- tions and tyranny of the Mother Country. At last they made common cause against her, and after a seven years' war with her power, they shook off her yoke, and became a free and independent nation. Now, the whole American people in this struggle were arrayed as compactly against the whole of Great Britain as if they had all formed but one State or colony, though in every battle after Bunker Hill, thirteen colonies fought in the ranks, and carried their flags and names into the conflict. The Mother Coun- try recognized no individual sects or colonies in the war, nor did they regard themselves as such in the contest. The antagonism was even, mutual, and unbroken, all along the line. Now, this parallel holds good by several striking analo- gies between the present and past relations of Protestants and Catholics. Thirteen sects virtuallv include all the sub-divisions of the Protestant world that have a well- organized status and effective organization. All these are as compactly and unanimously opposed to the whole Catholic Church as the thirteen American colonies were to the Mother Country in the revolution. Their denomi- national flags mean no other difference in the antagonism between the two great divisions, than the regimental flags of different colonies did in the Revolutionary War. I think dispassionate minds must recognize the fairness of this analogy. If so, they must admit that any antag- onism or difference between Protestants and Catholics in 20G CHIPS B^ROM MANY BLOCKS. this country, or in any other, is not sectaHan any inon^ than the Revohitionnry War, l)ut divisional in the broad- est sense in which that term is or can be applied to the populations of Christendom. But there is another analogy equally truthful and fair, which it may be well to con- sider at this point of view of history, made and to be made. When the thirteen American colonies separated from the Mother Country, they did not so mucli repudiate and reject the British Constitution as the violations, the usurpations, and corruptions and excrescences which it condemned, but which reactionary and corrupt Ministries and Parliaments endeavoured to foist upon it, or compel it to sanction. The Colonies mainly protested against these excrescences and usurpations. When they came to set up a government of their own, they retained and adopted the very bone and marrow of the British Con- stitution, its representative principle, its whole code of common laws — in a word, all its best elements p,nd quali- ties which have made both countries whao they are. Are not these things so ? Well, when Protestant England and Germany separated from the great Mother Church, which had contained in itself all the Christian faith, doctrine, and worship that had existed in the world for a thousand years, they did not repudiate and reject its whole consoitution and body of belief. They /protested against the excrescences, cor- ruptions, usurpations, and tyrannies which had grown up into or upon that Constitution through the Dark and Twilight ages. All that was true and vital in it they re- tained and hold to-day. They made its doctrine of the Trinity the very basis of the Protestant faith. They adopted its full belief and teaching in regard to the divinity of Christ, the virtue of His sacrifice, the being and mission of the Holy Spirit — in a word, they accepted and hold to-day all that is contained in the Apostles' Creed of the Catholic Church. They accepted the Gospels EDUCATIONAL TOPICS. 207 and E])istlo8 which it had preserved for fifteen hundred years, just as they found them. Tliey have never doubted its choice and decision in regard to the writings that should compose tlie New Testament. They liave never complained that certain Gospels or Epistles which ought to have been admitted were rejected. They have never charged or evidently suspected that Catholic monks, in making thousands of manuscript copies of the Gospels and Epistles, ever omitted, changed, or interpolated passages, or deviated from the original text in any way. They acce})ted Sunday as the C^hristian Sabbath, which the Catholic Church had established all over Christendom, and many othei- institutions, customs, and teachings of that Church. Are not these things so. and is it unsafe or indiscreet to admit their truth ? We niaj^ carry the parallel a little further, and safely. Perverted and corrupted as was the British Government at the American Revolution, was it not the only one in the world that contained the foundation principles of our own to-day ? • More than this : Did not the British Con- stitution generate and direct the political vitality which produced the American Revolution and its result? Did not the colonists on Bunker Hill stand inside of the British Constitution, and erect their breastworks and earthworks and their banners in its defence ? Well, is it not equally true and evident that the Catholic Church had in its con- stitution enough of the vitality of truth to evolve in like manner the Reformation ? Did not that movement come from within it ? Were not Huss, WyclifFe, Luther, Lati- mer and Ridley, clergymen of the Catholic Church, and did they get the light that led them from any outside organization or influence ? Undoubtedly the Reforma- tion was long delayed for lack of the power of the press. It was slow work for Wycliffe to enlighten the masses with his manuscript copies of the New Testament. But when another Catholic invented the printing-press, and some of the best education of Catholic Universities was 208 CHIPS FROM MANY IJLOCKS. enli.stcd in its working, the niovoinent progressed with irropr(!.ssil)le force to its gi-and result. May we not go a little further still without making un- safe admissions ? May we not accept the teachings of the most authentic history ? It is ti-ue that when a man on his walk to a better country has to wade through morass and mire for many miles, he will drag himself along heavily loaded with the weeds and clay on harder ground. For a thousand years the Catholic Church had to wade thi'ough and carry the dead weight of European paganism and harbarism. This was an exhaustive load for its sj)iritual vitality, and with only costly and few manu- scrii)t books, and small facilities for enlightening the masses of the people, there is no good reason to wonder that its working force of truth was unable to evolve the Refoi-mation before Luther's day. But the Catholic Church has to bear that old burden no longer. Its evol- ving periods will and must follow each other at dimin- ishing spaces between them. It is at this moment slowly evolving a new reformation in what is called " The Old Catholic Movement," which aims at as great a result to the religious world as Luther's programme. The force that produces these revolutions moves slowly at first, but each one it effects give it new power and impulse. The Old Catholic Movement will not be the last. A century hence, even, a new Dr. Dollinger may arise to carry for- ward the whole Catholic Church to a new stage of progress and transformation. Now, with all our strong convictions as Protestants, is it. indiscreet and unsafe to concede to the Catholic Church this self-contained evolving force ? Does not history prove its existence and working ? Perhaps I have now gone as far as the most liberal Protestant who follows me may think that either should venture. But should not the concessions already made prepare us to accept a situation which we cannot reject or prevent ? Is it not the fact that there are to-day more Catholic bishops, priests, and churches in these two Amer- EDUCATIONAL TOPK^S. 209 icas than them were in the whole world in Luther's day ? Does any one doubt this, then let him consult the .statis- tical record. We cannot abolish the fact by closing our eyes to it. Then must we not accept the situation, pre- sent and to come ? Must we not admit that the Catholic Church is here, and to be here, with every legal ability of growth which our government allows to the Protestant Church — that it is here not as a aect but as a dlvlmov, and that as such we have to deal with it ? Now, as ninety-nine common school teachers out of one hundred in all these Northern States are Protestants, as the litera- ture of all our reading-books, and the very atmosphere of our schools and even their outdoor .sports, are Protestant in their influence, would it not be judicious as well as liberal, to remove all religious bars to the admission of Catholic children ? We ask and require them to yield .some of their .scruples in .sending their children to schools which are effectively Protestant, and which they have considerable reason to expect will influence their young minds. Then we may well and justly make .some conces- sions of the same kind to them. If the Scriptures are to be read in all our schools, what harm would accrue to our Protestant children if selections from the Douai Bible, or from both Bibles, were adopted for the exercises ? But I will not enter upon the education question proper. My only object has been to show that the term sectarian cannot be properly applied to it in the sense generally adopted. CHAPTER VII. RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. GOD'S POLYGLOT BIBLES. GOD'Si POLYGLOT BIBLES — GOD'S TENEMENT HOUSES — PULPIT BARS AND CHAINS— CHURCH BARS AND BOLTS— LAY WORKERS AND THEIR TRAIN- ING—FUNERAL BARS OF SYMPATHY — THE RULING FASHION IN DEATH— THE LORD'S PRAYER—AMOROUS SENTIMENTALITY OF MODERN HYMNS- HEROINES OF ENGLISH PHILANHTUOPY — THE ZONE OF THE WISHING DAY. E have been taught from childhood to consider the Bible as literally the book, and the only book of God's revelation to mankind ; as the only book that contains the history of the human race from the beginning of their existence, and also the history of the creation. It seems to me that no intelligent Christian is bound to take this limited view. The whole universe is full of God's polyglot Bibles. Every sun, planet, and satellite is a separate volume, of which every paragraph and line is written by his own hand. It is an illustrated volume, full of grand and beautiful engravings. Not an i is dotted, nor a t crossed, nor a design etched by a human hand. No human writer has added a syllable to a single page in one of the millions of these books written by the fingers of God, not only in tablets of stone, but on all the leaves of rock and strata of soil in the whole circumference of creation. These millions of volumes are all written in different alphabets, but in the same prosody and syntax of inter- pretation and meaning. All this infinite library is open to us ; not a book closes its lids against our inspection. When we have learned the letters, and are able to con- RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. -211 stiue sentences of this literature of God's own hand, he invites us to read it with as devout and lionest faith in its truth and teaching as in any of the inspired Scriptures written by Moses or the prophets. No intelligent and Christian nund need fear any lack of concordance between these physical and moral Scriptures. The Bible is the last crowning volume added to God's library. It sum- marizes the raison d'etre, or the ground- plan and moral motive of the whole universe of his ^creations. It shows us a spiritual world which is to this material universe what the soul is to the human body. It reveals to us the fundamental principles, structure, and laws that govern this spirit world, and make its harmony and happiness, just as God's physical Bibles reveal to us the structure, laws, and principles that exist and govern in each of his material creations, and make and preserve their social fellowship, harmony, peace and order. There seems to be nothing more fully evident and clear- ly established than the fact that God has not only intend- ed, but enabled us to read all the Bibles in his library with full and reverent faith in his authorship of them all ; to receive from them one harmonious body of instruction in regard to the whole plan and motive of his creations ; in regard to all the beings that inhabit them ; in regard to their physical and moral constitutions, and to all he has done and is doing for their well-being. Not one of liis books alone can contain all his revelations to man. The Bible does not teach the anatomy of the human sys- tem, the circulation of blood through it, or any of the secrets of its internal structure, functions, and laws of ; physical life. The human body is a book by itself, just like one of the planets. It is a book full of physical truths and revelations written by the finger of God direct. It has its alphabet, its syllaHes, its syntax and prosody. From Adam down to this moment, the language written in bone and muscle, nerve, heart, and vein has been pre- cisely the same in men of every race. Every thorough 212 - CHIPS FllOM MANY BLOCKS. student of anatomy can read tlic one language of this volume in its original. He sees that every syllable of it is only a translation of the Christian Bible, written in the fleshy tables of the heart, or in the physical ccnstitution of man. He finds the dialogue that was brought down by Moses from the mount written by the same finger in the human system of the fii-st created man. He reads and sees how the body is fitted to the mind, and the mind to the body, in perfect harmony of sensation and action. He sees their laws in one and the same decalogue, but ' written in two difterent languages. These physical and spiritual laws, though wiitten on two tables, perfectly harmonize in their meaning ; so that he might be sure what the moral laws should be if he could only read the physical perfectly. So in the next circle of created things. The earth is to the human body what that body is to the soul, and is fitted as harmoniously to both as one of them is to the other. A tree is a round volume, bound in its own bark. Each page from heart to skin registers a year of age and growth. The botanical anatomist may not only read the record of these leaves, but read the whole constitution of the tree, *he laws that govern its vital functions ; may study and un- derstand the system of its veins and arteries, the circula- tion of its white blood, and the whole machinery and process of its nutrition and growth. All this is written by the same finger that he recognizes in man's physical system. The earth itself keeps the record of its history, written in the same way on the tables of its heart. It is a vast volume of leaves, every one bearing a revelation from the hand of the Creator. The record of every leaf is as clear and true as the record of any page in the volume of a tree. The anatomist of the earth can read its vital system as plainly as the vital system of man. Its osteology he understands as perfectly as that of the hu- man system. He can study the functions and movement of its heart, aiieries, and veins with the same ease and RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 213 instruction. He can see the process of germination, growth and nutrition just as clearly as in a tree or human body. He sees what' makes trees, grass, grain and fruits on the surface of the globe, as plainly as what makes flesh, hair, the pupil of the eye and the finger-nails of man. He reads on every page in this open volume, that if the human race were all incorporated in one living man, con- taining all their bulk, the earth would bear the same re- lation to his body, and be as harmoniously and vitally fitted to it as the body is to the mind or spiritual nature. Here then we have only a few of the millions of Bibles that comprise God's library, all opened for our perusal ; all containing revelations equally true and instructive in their several departments of knowledge. It is not only our privilege, but our duty, to believe that each and all of these millions of volumes bear God's signature and seal, that their records are not only true, but that not a single truth revealed in one is incompatible with a single truth revealed in another. GOD'S TENEMENT HOUSES— THEIR AGE, NUMBER AND INMATES. No one who believes in the existence of the God the Bible reveals, doubts that He was the same in one period of eternity as another ; that He was the same in infinite power, wisdom, and goodness before He created our earth as He is now. But the belief seems to have t«,ken fast hold of the majority of the Christian world that, up to the time of this creation, God spent the whole of antece- dent eternity in perfect inactivity as far as His creative power wcs concerned ; that up to this time His universe was one boundless blank of non-existence; that He had had not buil» a house for any created being; that not a 214 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. sun, star, or planet had shown a point of light in the darkness of universal nothing ; that not a being of flesh and blood in all this lifeless expanse was found to lift up his hands and eyes to an almighty Creator, and say, " Our Father in Heaven," Now this belief seems hardly reverent to an almighty Creator. It implies that up to the creation of our solar system He lived alone, filling the boundless solitude of the universe with His own self ; that for all this past eternity He did not exert His creative power, but let it lie inactive ; that He did not care to have the homage and love of happy human beings on their own account or His own ; that none such existed, and that He did not con- struct any habitations for such beings. Then this old belief seems to ascribe a human weakness to the Creator, or a change of mind and purpose. It implies, to speak in human phrase, that He became tired of living alone ; that He resolved to create a race of human beings on whom He would bestow His love and receive theirs in return ; that He carried out this purpose for the first time at the date and in the manner that Moses gives for " the creation of the heavens and the earth," Surely this belief must be founded in a narrow view of His almighty power and of His purpose and plan of creation. It ascribes to Him what we should not regard as wisdom or benevolence in man. It almost charges Him with inactivity, or a disuse of the faculties of His omnipotence. Let us now come to another general impression of tlie Christian world which seems to do less honour still to the wisdom, goodness, and power of the Creator. This is a belief which a full faith in the facts which science has brought to light has not weakened even in the minds of enlightened men. Whatever theories have been accepted or rejected in regard to the fixed stars, nearly everybody now believes what accurate science has established in regard to our own .solar system. Our school childrt'n comprehend and fully believe it embraces a certain nuin- RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 215 l)er of planets, great and small, that revolve around the sun. Astronomy and geometry have absolutely measured these l)odies, and the rate and direction of their move- ments. Science has gone farther still, and shown us by the spectrum analysis the character and proportion of their minerals, in a word, their whole physical constitu- tion. Children can tell us how small is the size of the earth compared with Jupiter, Saturn, and Herschel. Yet of all the planets that revolve around our sun, it is prob- able that ninety-nine Christian minds in a hundred feel almost Ijound to believe that our earth alone was created for intelligent human beings and alone peopled by them ; as if all the other bodies were mere make-weights to regulate the motions of our planet in its orbit, or as a ))iilliant coi'tege of honour to grace its triumphal nmrch. Then this belief consequently implies that no heavenly bodies outside our solar system are inhabited by beings who need material habitations ; that even if there be millions of globes in the universe larger than ours, they were only created by God to show His power ; that they are all empty houses, though lighted, warmed, swept, and garnished for the occupation of beings who might rejoice in His love and fatherly care. Let us find a parallel to the logic of this common idea. Here is a ten-acre meadow flecked with a million daisies, every one having its yellow orb surrounded by a white ring, like one of the great planets. This orb is peopled by a living multitude of beings of a race which we will call the mitel'ind, which, small as they are, we will sup- pose capable of thought and speech. One of them, given to speculation, creeps out to the white rim of his little world and looks oft" upon the sidereal universe spread out before him, all alight and bespangled with its stars of various size according to their distance. He sees broad milky ways of then\ crossing the field of his vision. He knows that they are all worlds like his own, some much larger even, and equally well made and beautiful. But 216 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. in a most important respect they differ from his own yellow globe. His, he believes, is the . only one of the myriads inhabited l)y mitekind. All the rest are empty worlds. They only exist to do honour to his own, and to show that it is the only one that has any practical object for its creation. Now, would not this idea of a reasoning mite be as logical as the idea of a reasoning man who believes that the earth he inhabits is the only world in the universe peopled with human or intelligent beings, conscious of an almighty Creator and capable of His love and worship ? The reasoning mite knows that all the yellow, white-rimmed orbs of the great expanse before him are daisies like his own habitation. He knows thai the little speck on the outer edge of the field may be as large a globe as his own, and that it is only the interven- ing distance that makes it seem less. The reasoning man knows by the same sense and evidence that the minutest point of light in the sidereal heavens is a material body like the earth on which he dwells ; that if it does not look to him as large as the moon, it is only because it is so much farther from him than that body. Then he knows that not a star has moved an apparent inch from its fixed place in the constellations so familiar to him, such as the Great Bear, Orion, and the Pleiades ; that each is as fixed and stationary as our own sun, and if it has any practical use it must also be as a centre and source of light and heat to smaller bodies revolving around it, or planets like those of our solar system. Admitting all these facts, as an intelligent man does and must, it seems strange that he can believe that the earth is the only habitation of human or intelligent beings among the countless millions of tenement houses that God has built in His boundless universe. There is another impression which perhaps a great majority of Christian people think that they are bound to hold as an oithodox faith. It is this, that whatever be the number, magnitude and uses of these countless RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 217 myriads of heavenly bodies, they were all created simul- taneously, or at the same time. Now there is nothing in Moses's account of the creation, nor anything in the laws and teachings of nature to justify this impression, any more than there is in history that all the cities of habita- tion on the earth were built at the same time. It would seem the dictate of common sense to believe that God built all these tenement houses, to speak humanly, just as they were needed for the tenants he purposed to occupy them. We know that this was the case with our earth — that it was made expressly for mankind, and they were introduced into it as soon as it was fully prepared for their reception. Astronomers tell us that since the birth of Christ more than a dozen fixed stars, all the centres of solar systems, have disappeared, — of course with all the planets that revolved around them. This very year we read of such a fixed star or sun blazing forth suddenly and burning itself out into darkness. Some watchful and watching astronomer discovered the phe- nomenon with his telescope. It was a mere accident that any human being saw it at all. Perhaps in every century since our earth was fitted for human habitation some solar system as large as ours has disappeared from among God's creations, and one equally large has been introduced into their goodly fellowship, and both events have taken place unseen by human eyes. It must soften down the pre- sumption of the man who believes that the house he lives in is the only inhabited one of all the millions that God has built, to be made to feel that it might be burned down to colourless vapour, and yet its blaze would not be seen from the window of the nearest of those tenements he conceives were made to remain empty for ever. N 218 (MIIFS FROM MANY BLOCKS. PULPIT BARS AND CHAINS. " Here I have to preach a second sermon an hour and a half after the first, and I cannot stand it." A few days ago I received a letter from one of the most earnest, eloquent, and devoted ministers in Connecticut, with this statement of the manner in which he was chained to the pulpit. Nine in ten of all the ministers in the country, probably, could say the same in regard to their experi- ence, though they resolve and try to " stand it." Truly it is a lieavy burden, and one may well wonder how they manage to stand it. But if they are generous in fellow- feeling, they must sympathize with their congregations of young and old, well and weak, in the burden put upon them. If the ministers are chained to the pulpit twice in a Sunday, with only an hour and a half between the two services or fetterings, several hundred men, women, and children are as relentlessly chained to the pew and obliged to btir the burdens of two sermons with only the same space between them. Indeed, their mental bur- den is the heavier of the two, if they endeavour " to mark and inwardly digest " two sermons in such space, on different texts, and leading to different lines of re- flection. It would be well to elicit from intelligent members of such congregations all over the country their frank and honest opinion on this question : " Do you think, from your own experience, that one mind in a thousand can dig through the layer of the last sermon into the first, with the vacuum of only two hours between, and draw up from it any distinct and lasting impression ? " The fact is, the religious services on Sunday have been growing at a killing pace both for pastors and people in these latter years, and more and more work is likely to be crowded into the day unless the cry of " halt ! " is put forth and obeyed by common or stipulated consent. . RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 219 Under tho pi-esent rule, it is a misnomer to call the day the Sabbath. The idea and duty of rest are eliminated from it entirely, for it is the most exhausting day of the week to the pastor and the most active membei's of his congregation. Let us glance for a moment at this growth of Sunday work, and see by what ratio it has increased upon pulpit and pew. About fifty years ago, a new Sunday work was interpo- lated into the religious system of the country. The Sun- day-school was brought in to fill the narrow space betvreen the two sermons. The great duty of teaching the young in religious truth and life was crowded into thj^ small crevice of time. The minister was expected not only to write two sermons a week, and preach them with only ninety minutes' space between them, but also to fill two- thirds of this space in teaching a Bible class, or overlook- ing or addressing the Sunday-school. He was allowed less time for his dinner than the whistle in the shortest days of winter accords to factory operatives. How could such a day's work be called a Sabbath, or a day of rest, to him ? But how much less could it be such to the children! Think how their young feet are fettered to the pew as his are to the pulpit ! Think what comes to them between his "amen!" at twelve and the church bell at half -past one ! With the morning sermon on their minds, they have to go, without a breathing or thinking time of ten minutes, into their classes and be drilled in Scripture and religious instruction till one o'clock. Then they are given half an hour for bread and butter at home or at some corner of the church or chapel. The bell often interrupts them between the cup and the lip and calls them to a second sermon. Is it hard on the minister to preach it ? Let him think of the children. Is it not hard on their wearied minds to hear it, after all that has been put upon them in the three foregoing; hours ? Think of their teachers and their work — of delicate, devoted young women who do • not recover from the fatigue of their Sabbath work until the middle of the week. 220 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. Tliis may well be called a killing pace for pastors and people ; and it is the pace of nine churches in ten in the whole of New England. For in that proportion of them the minister is chained to the pulpit twice on Sunday be- tween half-past ten and half-past two, with a Sabbath- school between, in which he is often cruelly expected to take regular or occasional work, and the young and old to be present and active as learners or teachers; But there is another aspect of this excessive Sunday work which is most like\7 o be overlooked. Think what changes in the intellectual level of all our communities, in smaU towns and villages as well as cities, are being pro- duced by our common-school system, which is graduating generation after generation of higher intelligence. Think how much easier it was to write and preach a. sermon up to the level of a rural congregation fifty years ago than it is to produce one to-day which shall satisfy the expecta- tions of its hearers. Every year, in every town in these Northern States, a new class of young men and women go out from the " High School " into the local community who have studied grammar, rhetoric, logic, and the compo- sition of elegant literature. They carry with them not only a taste for reading, but educated perceptions of what is correct in style and delivery. The minister knows and feels this, and what is necessary in his sermon to satisfy hearers constantly increasing in intellectual force and cul- ture. Now let us see how all this bears upon the young minister, and let us sympathize generously with his position and prospects. We all know how young men are educated for the min- istry. They are mostly the sons of small farmers or of men of quite moderate means. What an experience of se- vere frugality, economy, and privation of family comforts would be revealed if the story of the education of three- fourths of our ministers were told in all its detail of parental • self-sacrifice, faith, and patience, through all the long stages of their preparation for the pulpit. How many expensive RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 221 years were between the primary school and the ^ra(Uiating day at college ! With but short breathing space the young man enters upon his theological coui*se. At last the consummation is reached. He comes out of these years of continuous study a candidate for the pulpit, with a con- stitution weakened by the long strain upon his intellectual faculties, and with no practical acquaintance with the average human nature he is to deal with. There are three chances in five that he or his father is in debt several hundred dollars for his education. He cannot atford to wait long for a pulpit, and he accepts one, with perhaps six sermons, which he has written, as it were, at a mark, or with no knowledge of the location, condition and cha- racter of his audience. Composition is a slow and hard work for him of course in his first experience. He knows he is expected to preach two sermons on the Sunday and deliver an address at the Friday evening meeting, besides attending funerals, some of which are sure to come on Sunday in busy times of the year. Then what? The young pastor knows what is before him ; the weight of the two-sermon burden he is to carry. He does not say with the middle-life minister I have cited, " I cannot stand it." No ; he is ready for a desperate effort. He will stand it, if life and grace last, for four years or even five. Then he will go to another pulpit for which he will not have to write two sermons if he has to preach them on Sunday. He will do what he can, and his very best, for his first charge while he remams. Still he not only expects but intends that the relation shall not be for life or for many years, for he cannot stand it. Thus it is almost inevitable that, in taking his first charge he should feel towards it as an English farmer does towards a farm leased to him for four years. He will do his best with it during his occupation, but he cannot feel, hope, and work in the sentiment of a permanent relation. Thus the ministers in New England at least are generally the most temporary members of the churches under their 222 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. charge. It is said that some do not oven enter their names upon the list of inem})ership, as tliey may so soon be called to another pulpit. Fou/r years, it is estimated, is the average holding or the same charge by the Congre- gational ministers in Connecticut, and that is probably the averngo all round. Now is this a healthy condition of relationship be- tween pastors and people ? If it is not, it may be in a great degree charged to the two-sermon regime which chains the minister twice on Sunday to the pulpit, in most cases with only one hour and a half between ? Is it not high time for Christians of all denominations to give serious thought to a system that produces such re- sults ? Would it not, on the whole, be better for the min- ister to concentrate his thoughts into one impressive ser mon instead of spreading them over two, when only the last is remembered and inwardly digested by his hearers? By doing this he might be unchained from the pulpit to fill the imporant part of his duty and mission as a teacher. And what a burden would be lifted from the congregation, young and old, y this change ! They might all go home to eat their dinners without huny ; have an hour's rest, then all come together, say at three p.m., to meet in classes as a school for the study of the Scriptures, with the pastor at the head. A prayer-meeting in the evening in the chapel, and smaller meetings at different mission posts in town, would till the day better than under the present system. CHURCH BARS AND BOLTS. It is high time that the Christian community in our larger and smaller cities and towns should face certain facts which the progress of our modem civilization has rendered inevitable as well as evident. It is doubtful RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 223 if the great religioiis public has as yet opened its eyes to these inoinentoiiH fact-*. The first that should appeal to their most thoughtful consideration is the fact that, in New England even, perhaps the most religious com- munity in America, there is not a town or city contain- ing from ten thousand to one hundred thousand inhabi- tants that has roomage in all its churches for half of its population, even if every pew and aisle were packed full to the last square foot of space. Thus full half the population of such a town are shut out of the house of God for lack of room in them. If any reader be in- clined to doubt the correctness of this statement, let him take the census of his town against the roomage of all its churches of all denominations. Here, then, is the front fact in the religious condition of New England, and it must be equally true and evident in all other sections of the country. This is only one of the triple bars of brass across the doors of God's house that close them against half the population of every large town. Religious worship in our costly and elegant churches has become one of the most highly-taxed luxu- ries of a highly-civilized society — a luxury which only well-to-do people can enjoy. We will not take a church on the Fifth avenue, in New Vork, but one just built in a growing and ambitious little city in New England. It has cost perhaps a hundred thousand dollars, half of which lies upon the building as a debt secured by mortgage. It will seat perhaps a thous- and persons if it has galleries, or eight hundred if it has not ; and as galleries are old-fashioned and " played out," most likely they are left out of the plan and purpose of the sacred structure. Everything must be in harmony with its graceful proportion and external show, such as costly and elegant upholstery, fresco-work, a pulpit that would have built a country church a century ago, an organ, a salaried quartette, communion service rivalling that of Solomon's Temple, and all the other fashionable 224 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. elegances of a fashionable church. Now, then, what next, to make it a success, last but not least, we will not say as an investment of capital, but as a self-su]^.porting establishment ? Everybody knows what next — a minis- ter of high order of talent and genius, who shall feel that in taking such a pulpit, Atlas-like, he is taking the grand edifice with al) it cost and all it owes upon his shoulders. He must tax all the resources of his learning, talent, genius, and physical ability, and concentrate them all in one con- tinuous drawing force to fill the church, especially with the most intelligent and well-to-do people of the town, who can pay as well as appreciate his power. The value and demand of the pews depend on his sermons, and the more original and brilliant these become, the higher rises the value and cost of every seat. When the church under such talented and devoted ministry culminates in the hoped for success, the cheapest pew in the building will cost the journeyman mechanic and his family, by the year, as much as the rent of a comfortable house and garden before the greenback era. He cannot feed and clothe his family, and rent two houses at the same time. Religious worship in the grand sanctuary is too costly for him. It was not intended or provided for liim and his like. He cannot afford to pay for it ; he is too proud, and, we might add, too manly to take his family into a free or charity seat, even if the church felt able or willing to provide one for him. All the churches in New England fifty years ago had each a negro pew. Perhaps many of them of modeiii structure have each two or three what poor men of a manly spirit regard as poverty pews ; but such men are not likely to occupy them. This is brass-bar number two. The third is equally strong, though it may seem smaller and weaker. It may be called the clothes-bar. To make the symmetries and harmonies of a costly and elegant church complete, its worshippers — I beg pardon — the people who worship in it are not only expected but constrained, by a custom RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 225 they dare not disobey, to dress on the ascending level of the fashion. To do this, under the present tariff on silks and other fashionable goods, costs an anxiety of mind and a desperation of effort to thousands which it has seldom entered into the hearts of the rich or well-to-do to con- ceive. I fear it may be said with truth that if all the thoughts by night and day that exercise a modern congre- gation, in regard to dress in church, were put in one volume of solicitude, it would out-measure in width and depth the current of their thoughts in regard to the dress they shall wear or lack among the spirits of the just made perfect in heaven. This clothes difficulty is a bar which in itself shuts out thousands from the house of God, who will not enter it wearing the badge of an in- ferior social position. There is no country in the world where this bar closes the regular church against such a large proportion of the people as in America, even among our most religious communities. I never was so much impressed by this fact as when asking the wife of an industrious mechanic why she and her husband did not attend some regular place of worship, so that if sickness or affliction came upon them, their condition would be known and alleviated by the aid and sympathy of Chris- tian people. " That is all very *well," she replied, " but the likes of us cannot afford to go to church ourselves. Why, it is all we can possibly do to dress our girl even with her class-mates in Sunday-school." I would ask the thoughtful reader of any town of ten thousand or more inhabitants if these are not evident facts. If they are, then do they not prove that at least lialf the population of every such town are shut out of the house of God ; that the pulpit ministiy does not reach them, and never will reach them in our modern churches ? It is utterly impossible for the regular ministry, under the present exactions and burdens put upon them, to l)ring these outside masses under their preaching. This is a work for laymen. This is the broad field for Christian 226 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. labour which they alone can occupy. The earnest, unpro- fessional preaching of common men, in common buildings where the pew difficulty, the clothes difficulty and the social difficulty shall be unseen and unfelt, is the only ministry that can bring the kingdom of heaven and open its doors to these outside thousands. LAY WORKERS AND THEIR TRAINING. In a recent article I urged upon the serious consideration of thoughtful men the fact, that the pulpit ministry, in all our growing towns, is driftin^^ farther and farther away from the working masses of the people ; that religious wor- bhip in our costly and elegant churches is the luxury of the well-to-do class ; that the Gospel is not and cannot be preached to the poor in such churches ; that there is no room for them in the modern houses erected and dedi cated to the worship of God ; that where there is no room provided for them there cannot be an expectation that they will attend on such worship. And perhaps it would not be going too far to infer that were there is no room nor expectation, there is no honest wish for the poor to listen to the Gospel in such places. Thus we must face this staring fact in the conditions of the most religious communities in this country, that full one half of the population of every considerable town are barred out of our churches, and are now, and forever to be, beyond the reach of the regular pulpit ministry. Then if they are ever to have the Gob^el preached to them, it must be by lay members of the churches, — earnest and well- trained men and women of all denominations. If the lay power of Christian workers is to undertake this great work with any hope of success, it must fit itself for tlie field of labour in heart, thought, faith and hope, as RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 227 well as in numerical force. Every Church must send more labourers into the field, every one of whom must give as much previous thought to what he is going to say to God and man at a prayer-meeting in an out-lying school-house or a private dwelling as he would give to a ten minutes' speech at a political or temperance con- vention. And where there is a heart for the work the demand for workers will create a supply. Does any one ask why the supply is so very small now? The reason for it is the most natural in the world. We have been considering the process by which the poor, even the great masses of our working-men, have been shut out of our churches. Let us now for a moment see the pro- cess by which the speaking power of laymen inside of our largest churches is suppressed or suffered to run to waste for lack of exercise. Will the thoughtful reader refer to his own observation and experience, and see if I am not describing this general process and its result correctly ? A season of remarkable religious interest once in five or six years supervenes in some town or village. Many young converts are brought into the fold of the Church, full of the enthusiasm of their first love, peace, and joy. Of course there is no opportunity to express their feelings in the gi-eat congregation on Sunday. The chapel at the evening meetings is crowded with men and women of all ages. The minister is at the desk, all alive and glowing with his best thoughts, and he fills half the hour with them, and they make a deep impression upon all. The deacons and the old " stand-bys " of the Church are all stirred with the spirit within them to earnest, and what is called "able" prayer and exhortation. They are al- ways able and ready to speak and pray after the minister closes his part of the service. They are expected by all present to do so, and they know it. They have trained themselves to it, and it would almost seem impertinent or presumptuous to a young man who has never spoken or piayed in a public meeting, to arise and open his lips be- 228 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. fore his highly educated minister and these old veterans of the Church. But there is another restraining influence, perhaps stronger still, which operates upon him to seal his lips. He is a young man, with a young man's feelings, and there are young women present, one of whom he may have regarded with special interest before his conversion. He has too good reason to believe that a significant smile, whose meaning he knows and dreads, will pass from one to the other if he should stammer, use the wrong word or lack the right one, or make a grammatical mistake in his short prayer or talk. Almost every possible influence is against him, and if he does not open his lips within the first six months after his conversion, there are ninety-nine chances in a hundred that he will never do it. Well, the six months of harvest-time are over. The sheaves are garnered in the Church or the revival is past, and is succeeded naturally by a kind of subsidence of religous feeling. A hundred converts have been added to the membership. Things now settle down to the normal level of faith and worship. The week meetings are reduced to the Friday evening chapel exercises. They are conducted on the pre-revival system. The minister leads with the reading of a hymn ; the melodeon plays the tune through ; then we have the voices of the con- gregation in set form ; then follows the prayer, reading of Scriptures, and the address from the pulpit ; then another hymn played and sung on the regulation pattern, and then the meeting is "opened" to the brethren. There is time for three prayers and three talks, with a sing be- tween them, if they are not too long. Look around the company ! Who are the men who make the three prayers and talks ? Who should they be but those best fitted and most expected to perform the service ? Don't you see ? They are our old pre-revival friends, the deacons and the old stand-bys of the Church. Can't they pray and speak well, without lack of right word and without blunder in grammar ? Could others speak better ? Cer- RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 229 tainly not. Every young Christian present believes this. He would feel himself in the wrong if he did not believe it. What necessity, motive, or impulse can act upon him to induce him to open his lips before his educated minis- ter, before such able men, and especially before a score of young ladies just graduated from the high school, fresh from thorough exercises in grammar, logic, and rhetoric ? No ; though his heart may be full and beating with the pulse of spiritual life, his conscience would almost rebuke him for occupying time which others could so much better fill. So his lips are sealed. There is no place nor duty for him, even in the Friday evening chapel-meeting, ex- cept to hear and get good from what others say and do. Thus it is, that if the census of all the Churches in New England were taken, it would be found that they do not average more than four speaking laymen to each Church ; for there is no time nor occasion for more than four to open their lips at one of its week-evening meetings. Their number follows the law of demand and supply. Four are all that are needed at such services, and four generally are forthcoming to meet the demand. So nine- teen in twenty of the ma' members of all the Churches in the country tire not only silent, but virtually silenced Christians all the days of their lives. Besides ^is lack of place and duty for them at regular chapel-meetings, there are thousands upon thousands of young Christians whose lips are sealed against utterances at such times by a kind of over-awing fear of their ministers. How few timid, scantily-educated young men would dare to pray in the presence of Henry Ward' Beecher, or Dr. Storrs, with the large, intellectual congregations that fill their con- ference rooms ? Then, perhaps, an equal number of young Christians are silenced for life in the first months of their religious experience by the fear that their first eflforts will be smiled at derisively by young women, whose good opinion they prize above its worth in regard to such a duty. 230 CHIPS FUOM MANY BLOCKS. Well, how change all "this ? How recover all this wasted or inactive lay-power, and bring it into vigorous life and action ? We see there is no motive, scope, or impulse for its development and expansion in the church and chapel, in Sunday or Friday evening service. That field has been tried for a hundred years, and has failed to develop or employ this lay-power. The broad, hard, un- cultured field that lies outside the church and its pulpit ministry is the only place where this power can be brought into action. Here it may, and will, giow by what it feeds upon. Here is scope, duty, motive, and re- ward for every man and woman, for every boy and girl, who can utter a word in prayer, exhortation, in hynm or verse of Scripture. Compare the surroundings, the per- sons, and all the other circumstances of a little gathering in a district school-house with those of the regular chapel service. Here are a score of men, women, and children from the homes of the common people in the neighbour- hood. No dress or social distinctions are visible here. No critical or learned presence throws a restrictive shade over those who are to speak and conduct the service. Here every one counts at a value which his or her pre- sence does not pass for in church or chapel. Here our young Christian, who feared to speak aloud in either, now finds a place and duty and reward for his utterances. Here he ventures to " break the ice," to take the first step, which costs more than all the rest, and here he takes the second, unio a continuous stepping in a life of Giristian labour. Here is the only place where the Christian Church can show and enjoy its family character. What would a family circle be if no one spoke but father and sons, if no woman's voice nor child's voice was heard around the table or fireside ? But in the little school-house, or private house-meeting, these gentler voices may be heard in prayer or exhortation. Here they are encouraged to utterance, intimidated by no restrictive presence. Hero the children's voices, repeating aloud texts of Scripture RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 231 in unoccupied moments in the service, give to it a family circle character, and a kind of interest unknown to the large meeting of the chapel. Here, too, a wanderer, who has lived without God and without hope all his life, can have the Gospel of salvation preached to him within arm's reach, into his very face and eyes, as well as into his ears, — preached to him by one on the level of common life, whose hands are hardened with its labour, whose heart is full of sympathy with its experiences, and who can speak to the heart of the working-man as no other j)reacher can do. Here, too, kind words may be exchanged at the close of the meeting. Every one present may be spoken to, and greetings by hand and voice may pass around, and all be brought within the circle of social sympathy. In this great outside field, the young women of the Church may find ample scope for Christian labour. One ol them can do more than half-a-dozen men in calling upon families in the outlying districts, and in inviting them to attend the local meeting. They need never fear rebuff or rudeness from the roughest man whom they speak to with a voice and a look which means a kindly interest in his well-being. Then their voices at the meet- ing makes a music in hymns which is a power for good with such men. In a word, it is this kind of woman- work that is indispensable to every field of lay-labour. FUNERAL BARS TO SYMPATHY. There are many customs, old as well as new, which bear with increasing weight upon the conditions of Christian life and death. We have recently noticed what manner of bars are put across the doors of the Christian Church, which shut out thousands of poor men and women from its ministrations. All thoughtful persons who have eyes 232 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. to see and ears to hear, and who use both attentively, must be convinced that the church is the greatest centre and source of fashion in every town, great or small ; that it is the only place where a fixed congregation of a thou- sand or five hundred persons can show to each other the latest styles and make a joint display of them to their mutual emulation in matters of dress. No assemblage can be so susceptible of this emulation as a permanent congregation of church-goers, for two or three reasons. In the first place, they are all residents of the same town or village, and generally on speaking terms with each other. Then they constitute the only assemblage that meets in the same place, week in, week out, through the year. In these respects they differ widely from a large company of opera or theatre-goers in our large cities. These are mostly strangers to each other ; many, perhaps, from distant parts of the country. Few of them, it may be, ever met be- fore, and two-thirds of them will never meet again in that building. Thus they do not have the motive to impress each other with a show of dress ^hat operates upon the permanent congregation of a fashionable church.. But all this goes without saying, for no observant per- son can fail to recognize this centripetal attraction of fashion to what we dedicate and venerate as the house of God. But if thousands are barred out of the elegant and costly structure by the expensive fashions and customs which attach to it, these follow them with merciless per- sistence to another house from which there is no escape for rich or poor, — the house of the dead. The fashionable grave grasps thousands who escape from the fashionable church. It puts upon the labouring classes a burden exceedingly grievous and heavy to be borne, and it is growing more and more heavy from year to year in all our growing towns or smart villages. Do thoughtful Christians think of these things ? Do they ever compare the cost of a sitting in the church or a lying in the gi-ave twenty -five years ago with the cost of RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 233 the two holdings to-day ? A funeral comes always after a long or short sickness, attended with much expense, as well as painful watch and heart-sinking grief. A wife or son, whose help as well as comfort was so valuable and dear, is taken away. Fashion throws its toils around the mourning husband or father in these uoft moments of his sorrow. Fashion suggests, even prescribes, how much he should expend, and wherein, to befit the measure of his love for the dear one gone, and the depth of his grief for the loss he weeps. Fashion prescribes the style and cost of the coffin, the number of hired hacks for the procession to the grave, the mourning dress for his family, the size and price of the monument. If all the families who have gone to the grave with their 'dear ones, bending under the heavy load which fashion saddled on their sorrow, could or would give united voice to their experience, what a cry would go up in every Christian community against a custom which it noli only tolerates but stimulates ! But costly and showy as modern funerals have become for rich and poor, there is a custom prevalent which greatly restricts their effect, not only for the higher les- sons they should teach, but for an expression of sympathy with the bereaved and of esteem for the departed. Now, setting aside all other considerations, it would seem natu- ral and proper that, as the church is the first house, out- side of his father's, to which the child is carried for baptism in infancy, the church should be the last to which the man or woman should be carried on the way to the grave. The Roman Catholic and Episcopal Churches recognize this fitness as well as duty to the bereaved and their dead. And the same natural fitness and Christian duty should be recognized and observed by all other de- nominations. But let us dwell for a moment on other considerations than a mere sense of fitness or propriety. Let us first consider a funeral as an expression of esteem for the character of the dead and of sympathy with the bereaved. O 234 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. Now, if the sentiment of all those acquainted with the deceased could have free and unrestricted manifestation, his funeral would show the full measure of estimation in which he was held while living. And his funeral is the only time or place at which this estimation can be, or is, measured for the good of the community or the comfort of the bereaved. l3uring his sickness, few of those who esteem him expect or are admitted to see him. But at his funeral, no comfort, this side of direct divine consola- tion, is so dear to the mourning family s that which the presence of a large assemblage of sympathizing persons gives to them. Here and now they learn for the first time how the beloved departed was held, even by those they did not know appreciated his character. How many families at that hour, and in remembrance of it have said : " We never knew before we had so many friends ! " But such a manifestation of sentiment is not only precious amd comforting to the bereaved family, but it exerts a healthful influence on the community, showing how a good and useful life is held and rewarded. But the custom of funerals at private houses represses this manifestation of sympathy, and dwarfs the fruits it should bear. Such a funeral, under the regime of modern custom, is becoming more and more a select, private party — almost a drawing-room reception. Those who attend it are virtually invited guests. They are ticketed to the mourning hacks pretty much as couples to chairs at a fashionable dinner. Few else feel at liberty to attend. Thus the whole company, though as large as the house will hold, is virtually a select party. Others may and do come to funerals in our smaller cities and towns, and some- times find unoccupied or extemporized seats in the hall or on the door-stones. But a great number of persons who esteemed the deceased, and sympathize with the bereaved, stay away, not only because they are not invited to attend, but because they know they could not get into the house if they went, or in hearing distance of the ser- RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 235 vict'H. Thus, an an expression of synipatliy, a private house-funeral is a small, compressed manifestation of a sentiment which should and would be a precious consola- tion to the mourning family. Then there is anotner consideration which is worth some thought, though few may deem it important. If the disease has been malignant, and even suspected merely of being cantagious, the fear that it has impregnated the house operates to prevent many from attending the fune- ral under the same roof. Those present are there from a sense of duty, and feel themselves exposed to a danger which they are willing to incur on account of their family or social relationship to the bereaved circle. If the funeral were in the church, this feeling would not exist to prevent the attendance of any one inclined to be present. But we have reserved the most important consideration to the last. If a large company is ever in a mood of mind to be deeply and easily impressed, it is in the solemn and softening presence of the dead. No minister can ever address a more susceptible audience than the one that ought to be before him, face to face at such an hour. But in a private house, however large, he cannot be face to face with them, and thus he loses half the force and im- pression of his words, even if they are all heard. But not more than half of the company either see or hear him. If the deceased occupied a high social and useful, position ; if his life has been of gi'eat value to the community, now is the time to impress the lessons to be drawn from his character and from the loss the Church, the Society, and its interests have sustained by his death. The greater his worth and the esteem in which he was held, the greater will be the crowd at the funeral. Then what ? Ask any one who has been present on such an occasion. The greater will be the number of those who cannot see the minister or hear a word he utters. They will be folded in a dozen different rooms with doors opening in different 236 CHII»S FROM MANY BLOCKS. directions. Many will bo posted by twos and tbreos up the stairs from bottom to top, even into the chambers or passages above. A hundred or more will stand for a weary hour outside of the house, and not being able to hear a voice of prayer or exhortation, many of them will fall back and stay themselves up against the fence. As nothing said within reaches their ears, they extemporize a little subdued conversation on the weather, crops, acci- dents, rumors, politics, and general prospects of business. Now, are not these things so, especially in connection with funerals which one would think ought to be made the most impressive upon all who attend them ? Why place any bars to the expression of sympathy ? Why not give it free course to manifest itself unchecked by a cus- tom better honoured in the breach than in the observance ? Surely no right-minded man could wish that a single per- son should be prevented from paying a last token of the respect which he wished to oflfer. Surely the bereaved family would not feel otherwise than gratified at seeing how many wished to offer such a token of respect for the deceased. Surely the minister must feel that his minis- trations would impress double the number in the church or chapel than they could reach in a private house. Then why not make the church the half-way house between a man's short home on the earth, and his long home in the gi-ave ? THE RULING FASHION IN DEATH. " ' My young master in London is dead ! ' said Obadiah. A green satin night-gown of my mother's, which had been twice scoured, was the first idea which Obadiah's exclamation brought into Susannah's head."— Sterne. What woman, in any position or rank of social life, rich or poor, mistress or maid, has not felt Susannah's RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 237 " first idea '' irresii^tibly pressed upon her wounded spirit in the first moments of her grief for a loved one just gone ? What woman, weeping in silence under the sha- dow of this great aftiiction, has not felt it deepened and blackened hy the vision of sable millinery, which a pagan fashion prescribes as a public dress for her sorrow ? Pa- gan fashion ? No ; it cannot be charged to a heathen lineage or custom. It is the outcome of our Christian civilization in these latter days of elegant shows and costly pretensions. Is there enough of working vitality in the Christian life of this boastful generation to lift these heavy and grievous burdens from the house of God and the house of the dead ? See how they grow upon both, making it more and more costly for a humble Christian to live and to die. Already the church and the cemetery have be- come the two great rival centres of modern fashion, and the undertaker's and milliner's shops well stocked feeders for both. .The church of to-day is the most attractive centre of fashion. It is filled, unlike the opera or theatre, with a permanent, almost unchanging congregation of men, women, and children, mostly known to each other in week-day life, and more susceptible of the desire and tendency to imitate, emulate, and even to provoke, each other to envy in the matter of dress and fashion than is the case with varying and incidental company assembled at a thea,trical performance or place of general amuse- ment. Indeed, it may be said within the truth, that all the varying styles of dress for men, women, and children have more reference to the church as their show-room than to all other places and persons put t(>gether. Thus, religious worship in the house of God has become one of the most highly taxed luxuries in every one of our growing and populous towns. Even our smart little villages are ambitious to follow city models, and do not think of building a church under the cost of $50,000 or $00,000. Then, probably, owing half that amount for; it 238 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. at its opening, they must have a mimster of as nearly city grade and salary as possible, whose talent, genius and ardent devotion shall fill the house with the most well-to-do of the village, who can pay as well as appre- ciate such sermons and services. Then the choir must correspond with the pulpit, in a quartette, or at least in a paid organist, tenor, and soprano. The pews must pay it all, and a whole one needed by a journeyman mechanic for himself and family will cost him as much yearly rent as his house and garden before the war ; unless he takes one below the respectable line, and thereby shows every Sunday his lower social position. But suppose, with his wife and three children, he takes a fifty-dollar pew, that is, rents a second house to worship in once a week ; a still heavier tax awaits him. Fashion, with all its quiokly varying and costly church styles, meets him on the thres- hold of the sacred and elegant building. This is the last ounce that breaks or bends the back of his ability. Fashion has got him fast now. By great economy or ad- ditional industry he might stand a fifty-dollar pew, and apparently rank with his better-to-do neighbours. But he cannot bear this straining burden of the pew and keep even with them with the still heavier load of dress to equal their styles. Here he must fall back into the rear. He and his familj^ must wear to church every Sunday, not the " scarlet letter '" of poverty, but an expressive badge of their inferior position. We may blame him for his sensibility, and call it pride, but not meanness. It is a feeling that we cannot dissociate from manliness, which no community can afford to condemn or ignore. Nor can , we less admire and love our country because in no other one on the globe is this sensibility of working men so vivid and so easily touched. It is this sensitiveness, more than all other causes put together, that excludes so many thousands of that class from the churches in our large towns. KELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 239 Thus we have the impressive fact before us, that here, even in our religious New England, there is no town of ten thousand inhabitants that has roomage in all its churches for over half its population. Still, they are not filled by the other half. The supply follows the demand, but the demand for such a highly-taxed luxury as reli- gious worship in a costly and elegant church, is not forth' coming, nor is it expected when such churches are built. Well, the working-man can, and does, in thousands of cases, refuse to buy a pew or sit in a charity seat. He may, and often does, turn his back upon a fashionable church ; but he cannot turn his back upon a fashionable grave. There is no discharge for him from that condi- tion. He must buy a family pew in the cemetery ; and when his soul is aflow on the flood- tide of its sorrow, the fashion of a modem funeral envelopes it and him with its costly trappings and symbols of grief. His hands are hard with factory toil, but his heart is too soft to measure his means against that debt which others may think he owes to his dead. jWhat if they should say that he thought of money at such an hour ; that he kept back part of what was due to the worth and memory of his dead wife, son, or daughter ! No; the sorrow of his broken spirit is a luxury which he must pay for, to those who witness it. He would not rent a fifty-dollar pew in the church, but he feels that he must now buy a fifty dollar coffin for the dead mother of his children ; then he must hire the re- gulation number of hacks for the real and professional mourners. The undertaker alone can tell him how many hacks should go to a fifty-dollar coffin. Then, although a cheap weed of grief will do for his own hat, he must put his daughters each in an entire mourning dress. The funeral is over ; he has complied in full with the unwritten rules of mourning which the city customs of religious sentiment prescribe. He goes back to his «hop or factory and tries to work off* the debt to the doc- tor and undertaker in the course of two years, besides 240 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. supporting the residue of his family. But when he has paid the last dollar of the two bills, he has not done with the costly fashions of the grave. The memory of the dear one gone grows more and more tender in his heart, as he misses the light of that life on his own. And memory is a costly luxury which must be paid for, especially to the visitors to the cemetery, who never spoke to his wife while living, and have forgotten that she is dead. In a certain sense and aspect, the modem cemetery is a more visible and permanent centre of fashion than the church. The pews of the silent congregation cost more than its sittings. The social status of their holders is marked by more pronounced distinctions. The best pew in a fifty-thousand dollar church will not cost its richest worshipper more than one hundred dollars annual rent. He cannot make a great show of his wealth in his pew with any special upholstery, but he can do it in the cem- etery to the full bent of his ambition. He erects a thou sand or two thousand dollar monument over his family grave. He sets running a competitive race of social dis- tinction among the grave-stones, high and low. Our journeyman mechanic feels that he must yield to the im- pulse. He has paid the doctor and undertaker, and now he must talk with the stone-cutter. He would stand well with public sentiment and custom. He would not be niggard towards a memory so dear to him. He agrees with the stone-cutter that a fifty-dollar monument is cheap enough for a fifty-dollar coflSn and twelve hacks ; so he orders one of that size and price for the grave of his wife. Now, are not these things so ? And is there no help for them ? In every one of our cities and citified towns we see how the cost of Christian life and death, of the pew and the grave, is constantly increasing. Said a poor German mother to me, while dwelling upon the loveliness of a daughter she had buried : " We gave her a hundred and sixteen dollar funeral." Said a minister, with a sal- RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. I 241 aiy of two thousand dollars : " If my wife should die in New York and I should buiy her in Greenwood Cemetery with a funeral befitting my position, measured by public sentiment or custom, it would cripple me for life." Is it not time for thoughtful Christian men and women to come to the rescue of the Christian church and the Christian grave from the thraldom of fashions and customs that put such bars and burdens upon both ? THE LORD'S PRAYER. A PLEA FOR A WRONG ENGLISH WORD. In the gi^eat General Conference of the Methodist Epis- copal Church, representing the largest body of Protestant Christians in America, one of the ministers, N. S. Buck- ingham, of Central Pennsylvania, submitted the follow- ing :— WhereaSf Our Lord's Pra37er in complete and perfect form is found in record onlj- in one place in the New Testament, namely, Matthew vi : 9-13 ; therefore Resolved, That this form be substituted, and published in our Book of Discipline, instead of the form now in use. Referred to the Committee on Revisals. Now, I would deferentially submit a few reflections on the subject of this resolution to the consideration of the mover, and of the committee to which it was referred. For eighteen centuries the whole world, now called civilized, has been filled with sharp controversies and antagonisms between different sects of professing Chris- tians over certain tenets of their creeds or forms of wor- sliip. But, in face of all the malignities, martyrdoms, and fiery and bloody persecutions which this theologi- 242 , CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. cal warfare inflicted upon so many past ages, there was one seamless garment of Christian faith that the racks of Inquisition could not rend, nor the fires of Smith- field burn, nor Puritan zeal reject nor attenuate. The Lord's Prayer has held its own through all the Armaged- dons of creed warfare, without the loss of one word, jot, or tittle of its meaning, truth or power, as it came first from the lips of Jesus Christ. It is making the grand tour of humanity, and will go down through the last ages of mankind, giving its sublime prerogative of petition to all races and tribes of men. Already it is out- running all human literature. Its glorious and beautiful words out-travel all others, as if the very angel of the everlasting gospel, in his flight, dropped them from his wings upon the lips of men in advance of the rest of his message. For more than a hundred years they were the first and only written words put into a hundred rude languages. They are now the first to be translated into heathen tongues, and they will be the first and foremost to be written in the other surviving speeches of man- kind. In one hundred and fifty different languages, the Lord's Prayer, whether translated by Protestant or Catholic, gives the fullest meaning of the original text that the language is able to express. And in the original Greek, and in eveiy other language, except the English, the acts or dispositions which we are to ask the Father to forgive, are described by a word which signifies sins, or transgres- sions, or trespasses. Now in the proposition that a body of American Christians, numbering nearly two million com- municants, shall substitute " debts " for " trespasses" they are to be required to use a word which does not express, nor even suggest, the meaning they wish to convey. There is no other word in the English language more fixed and circumscribed as to its sense than debts. It is a dry, hard term, unsusceptible of any metaphorical signi- ficance or application. Its meaning cannot be varied as RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 243 it strikes the ear. Everywhere, and always, it signifies what one owes to another, in money or something else. What, then, ^o we owe our Heavenly Father ? Certainly we do not ov. ; him disobedience and ingratitude. Sins against His law and gi'ace are not the debts we owe Him. Then why call them debts ? But perhaps some may affirm that the word may mean duties in this particular place and use ; but this is equally incongruous and irrelevant to the sentiment we wish to express. The meaning of duties is equally circumscribed and unchanged. They are services and sentiments we ought to perform and cherish towards some one. Every well-instructed child knows what are the acts and feelings which we owe as duties to God. Now, both in Matthew and Luke, the Greek word is atfaq, from a-^-q^i, literally, to abdicate, or remit. But who of us can have the heart and face to ask our Heavenly Father to remit the duty of love and service we owe Him ; to release us from the obligation to do His will, and obey His laws ? We need not raise any question as to which is the most authentic form of the Lord's Prayer, the one in Matthew or in Luke. One differs from the other in the word used to signify the conduct which we are to ask the Father to forgive. In Matthew it is a^es ra 6<l>€t\^ixaTa, which our English translation renders debts. In Luke we find it d0€s Tas d/>ta/)Tias, a word literally meaning short-comings or delinquencies ; that is, sins of omission. But sins of omission are not debts. It seems to be maintained that Matthew's version is not only the most complete, but most correct, and thab we should, therefore, say " debts," and not " trespasses." To all those who hold this view, I would commend the meaning which many eminent trans- lators have given to the word, or to what it should express. And the first translator of the word in discussion is Jesus Christ himself, and in the immediate connection in which it is used. We are to ask the Father to forgive 244 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. US something we have done or left undone, or both. According to Luke, he calls these sins of commission or of omission a/AapTias; according to Matthew, 6^€tX77/xaTa. Now, immediately after using the latter word, he virtually translates it, and makes it mean all the first expresses. " For," he says, '• if ye forgive not men their TrapaTrTw/xara," lit., falls, delida, delinquencies ; meaning all that is expressed in d/xaprias, except that the latter refers to com- ing short of the mark, and the former to falling on the way to it. Then is it not equally evident that our Saviour intended to make the meaning of o<jit(XrjixaTa include all that TrapairroifxaTa or a/xaprias conveys ? If we turn to Luke's version, we find 6(^u\-qfjiaTa used as the parallel and measure of ajUapTias in meaning ; thus, d^cs rjrjiv ra.<i d/xaprta? rjixiav : \ai yapv avTol d(f}L€fjb€v Travrl ocfieiXovrt rj/xiv' Now IS it not evident that in this form we are to ask the Father to for- give no greater sins or faults in us than we forgive in others ? Surely we could )iot have the assurance to say to Him : " Forgive us for breaking thy laws, as we forgive those who smile at us." If, therefore, we are to do to others what we ask Him to do to us, then otfiuX-qfiaTa must include, and equal, the meaning of d/xaprtas. Let us see what meaning the best Biblical scholars of Christendom have given to this latter word and to the first. Five hundred years before the English language was born, Bishop Ulfilas translated the Scriptures into Gothic, which is thus the literary mother of the whole Teutonic family of tongues. Let us see how he rendered irapairrMfiaTa and d/xaprta?. Ith jahai ni ajietith mannmn missadedins 'ize, ni thau atta 'izvar afletith missadSdins izvarda. Literally : " For if ye shall not let«off to men their misdeeds, neither will your Father let-off (d<^7pei) your misdeeds." Latin : Si antem non dimiseritis homlnihus, nee pater vester dimittet peccata vestra. KELIGIOUS AND MURAL. 245 Let US now come down a few centuries to more modem languages. Italian: Rhnettici i nostri 'peccati — Ma se vol non rimettete agll ttomini i lor faili, il Padre vostro altresi non vi rhnettera i vostri Spanish : Perdonanos nuestros pecados — mas si no soltdreis d los hombres sus ofensas, tampoco vuestro Padre OS soltard vuestras ofensas. Portuguese : Perdoa-nos os nossos peccados — mas se ndo perdoavdes aos homens, tdo pouco vosso Pal vos perdoard os vossos peccados. French : Pardonne-nous nospSchh, comme aussi nous pardonnons d ceux qui nous out offenses. German : Vergih uns unsere Silnden — wo ihr aber den menschen ihre Fehler nicht vergebet, so ivird euch euer Vater cure Fehler audi nicht vergeben. Danish : — Forlad os vore Synder — men forlade J men- neskene ikke deres Overtrcedelser, skal eders Fader ikke heller forlade eders Overtrcedelser. Swedish : Forldt oss vjdra synder — meti om J icke for- Idten mennikomen deras brett, sd skall edar Fader icke heller forldta eder edar brett. Icelandic : Fyrirgef oss vorar syndir — En ef tMr ekki fyrirgejith othrum, mun fathir ythar himneskur ekki heldur fyrirgef a ythur ythar misgjorthir. Dutch : Vergeef o'ns onze zonden — maar indien gij den mcTischen hunne niisdaden niet vergeeft, zoo zal ook uw Vader uwe misdaden niet vergeven. As there is no other language that can give so fully every sense and idea-tint of Greek words as the Sanskrit, let us notice how it renders TrapaTrrw/AaTa and d/uia/jTias, 246 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. Yathd vayami sarvdn apai'ddhinas kshartKhnhe, tahtd tvamapi 'papanysamakam kshavictava — Yadi yuyam anyesham aparadhan na kshamadhve, tarhi yusmakam janakopi yusmakam aparadhan na kshamishyate. Here aparadhan is the exact and full equivalent of afiapTia^, from aparadh, to displease, to offend ; and papani means sins, both in acts and dispositions. Now, then, what can be the possible gain in breaking up the uniformity of a petition uttered by so many hun- dreds of millions in a hundred different languages ? Why not obey the injunction of our Saviour, and let our yea be yea, and our nay be nay, in the prayer he has taught us ? Putting aside all the authorities here adduced, I would ask those who urge the change proposed, if they mean anything else or less than trespasses, when they would ask the father to forgive our debts ? If not, then why not let their yea be yea, and use the frank and honest word which expresses what they feel, and what they would say ? Is it because they are only conscious of small defects, which they think fall short of trespasses, that they object to the use of the latter word ? These are a few of the reflections and questions that I would commend to their consideration before they adopt a word so wide of their real thought and sentiment. AMOROUS SENTIMENTALITY OF MODERN HYMNS. I wonder if the elder men and women of our various denom- inational churches have noticed the contrast between the hymns they sung or heard in early life, and some of those which have become so popular in these latter days. It would seem impossible that they should not be struck with the difference between these modern hymns and those of RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 247 Watts, Wesley, Newton, Addison, Montgomery, and other religious poets, who never made the divine persons, at- tributes or subjects the theme of their songs, except with reverent and chastened imagination, diction and metaphor. They found full and ample scope for their best genius and thoughts in the great fact that " God is a spirit, and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." They worshipped him as a spirit, and to such wor- ship alone their pure and reverent songs uplifted the souls of those who sang or heard them. Not a figure, metaphor, or parallel, or suggestion, alloyed this devotion with the impure element of a carnal interest. While they incited one to love God with all the capacities of his physical as well as his intellectual and moral being, and sang of a heaven for each of his triune natures, he was to love as the angels love, and have only the angels' heaven for his future being. They gave wings to no carnal de- sire or imagination to ascend to that heaven for an ideal of enjoyment. How reverently they approach the im- maculate and holy humanity of the Son of God, never touching the hem of his purity with the pulse or breath of a sensuous sentiment ! Contrast their chaste, devotional hymns, which once were as wings to the spiritual worship of millions, with some of the most modern and popular religious songs now sung and heard in our churches and chapels — songs which, in sensuous phrase, figure and suggestion, outdo the amor- ous sentimentality of the most sensational novels. Indeed, the language, metaphor and style of some of these songs, called religious hymns, cannot have been borrowed from novels, but from a more sensuous source. So many of them are full of the gush of voluptuous sentiment or language, that it might seem to exempt the rest to notice one of their class. But, as it seems to be one of the most popular at our chapel meetings, let us glance at the one that begins' with : "Safe in the arms of Jesus, Safe on his gentle breast." 248 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. Now WO nmsfc confess that there are sensational uovcIh that could suggest the language and sentiment of the first line of this couplet. Some of them may make a romantic girl, crossed, let and hindered in the stnmg current of her passionate attachment, sigh and pray, even in rhyme, to be " safe in the arms " of her lover. But no novel would be so indecent as to make her sing the next line before, or even after marriage. And neither in fiction nor else- where does the most tender and affectionate son sing or sigh to be safe on his father's breast. Such figures of speech are unknown to the sentiments and language of manhood. The same oriental metaphor, or measure of sensual en- joyment, is the theme of many other hymns written to aid and elevate our spiritual worship. The four verses of one of these devotional lyrics begin each with "There's rest on the booom of Jesus." Here we have on again, not near. Even Bonar, the purest and most poetical hymn- writer of the day, does not hesitate to employ these sensuous figures to represent the communion of a converted soul with its Saviour. Ho not only puts those figures into the lips of both men and women, but, with more than Milton's license, into the holy lips of the Son of God himself ; for example : " I heard the voice of Jesus say, Come unto me and rest ; Lay down thou weary one, lay down Thy head upon my breast." Now it is evident that this distinguished writer takes his first two lines from Christ's own words while on earth. He did indeed say, " Come unto me " and " I will give you rest." He said this to all that labour and are heavy laden. But did any such language ever come from His lips as the poet makes Him utter in the two last lines of this verse ? Docs this sensuous paraphrase befit the RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 249 purity and dignity of the gracious invitation ? Indeed, one may have no little cause to wonder how even a Christian poet can think it reverent, and feel at ease, to put his own words, of any kind, into the mouth of Jesus Christ. Then another popular hymn seems to make a romantic, love-sick shepherdess ask Christ, as a shepherd with crook and pipe, where He makes His flock to rest at noon, and why He has left her to mourn His absence, and ask other questions which might be addressed by an enamoured maiden to her tardy lover. Now I wonder if a considerable number of other minds have noticed this characteristic of modern hymns written especially for our chapels. If many serious and thought- ful persons have noticed this, I wonder if they deem it more helpful to spiritual worship than the hymns they sung or heard in youth ? THE HEROINES OF ENGLISH PHILANTHROPY. The strongest forces in Nature are the stillest in action and least demonstrative in being. How quiet are all the germinating forces that clothe the earth with beauty and cover and gladden it with golden harvests and all the varied artistry of spring, summer, and autumn! How quiet and invisible is the work of the sunbeams, that per- meate the thick walls of great cathedrals and add inches to their statures under the noontide heat ! How imper- ceptible is the frost that gives to a quart of water con- lined in a bombshell the force of a pound of powder to burst the thick conclave of iron ! These quiet but mighty forces in Nature have their correlatives and co-equals in the moral world. If love is the sum and sun of God's at- tributes, how slowly, gently, and almost imperceptibly it permeates human society, expands and softens human p 250 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. hearts, quickening their best senHibilitie.s for woi'k of its own kind ! Measured against the forces which press to the front of universal estimation, liow feeble are those se- lected to do these great works of divine inspiration for human good ! Truly the weak things of the world have been chosen to confound the wise and mighty, who thought them weak for lack of insight into the strength of their faith, worked by love. The woman-power that is now working in every de- partment of Christian labour in Great Britain illustrates the boundless capacity of those quiet and gentle forces against the strongest holds of sin and misery that can face the light of civilization. These holds, though cased with granite or iron, yield to the permeating process of that power. Nowhere else has that power been deve- loped to such a capacity and variety of action. What it has done and is doing in England is worth more to the masses of mankind than all the pol i tical achievements or programmes that are monopolizing the attention and his- tory of this present living world. The woman-work in England must become the work of every land and race that would overpower the worst evils that afflict its so- ciety. We need it in every town and village in America. Its necessity grows daily in all our larger cities. There are walls of granite, bars of iron, and gates of brass in them all which no other power can penetrate, and loose the victims bound fast by their own appetites and habits. This woman-work in England has produced a literature which ought to be republished and read widely through- out the Union. The volumes that record its history bear no sensational but truthful titles. How many Christian women in America have read in their homes, and in face of the vice and evils they deplore, what Miss Marsh says in her " English Hearts and Hands," or Mrs. Wightmaii'« " Haste to the Rescue " and " Annals of the Rescued ? These books show the spirit, aim, and first fruits of a work which is now enlisting the best sympathies and pei-soiuu HELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 251 ilevotion of thou.sands of ladies in England, of refined culture and of high social position. And next to the grace of God in their hearts are the graces of this very culture to fit them for the work ; for it gives their hand, and voice, and eye a touch that the most ignorant, hardened, and vicious cannot resist. Indeed, these combined graces of spiritual, mental, and social culture are the very vital forces that give such power and success to the movement. Every reading American man and woman has heard of Florence Nightingale and what she did in the Crimea. Perhaps many of such readers have seen her photograph, and have been sui-prised to notice wha,t a thin, frail, deli- cate creature she is. They have wondered that she could go through such harrowing scenes of human suffering and do such work for its relief. I wish the photographs of other heroines of English philanthropy could be intro- duced into all the albums that grace the centre tables of American wealth and fashion. They would show what weak things of this world have been chosen to ordain the strength of Christian faith against the worst evils of so- ciety. Every one of these workers, so feeble in fiesh and blood,has made a history which would fill a volume, worth a dozen of the best novels of the day. I should like to interest the reader in the unwritten history of one of these workers. I had read Mrs. Wightman's " Annals of the Rescued *' with deep interest. It gave the details of her remarkable work among the working-classes in Shrewsbury. While spending a Sunday in Cambridge, I referred to the book and expressed much admiration at the labour it described. My friends told me, to my pleasant surprise, that a work of eq^ml importance was being carried on in a populous suburb of the city by the daughter of one of the college professors, and that she held a meeting that very evening of working men. I hastened to the building and took, a seat by the door, where I could see as well as listen. The scene was one which few congregations ever presented. 262 . CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. At the desk of the long school-room sat the young crea- ture, hardly twenty-five years old, a delicate, fragile thing, born and moving in the highest circle of refined society and dressed as if it were before her there, in the rough-faced audience of five hundred working men who filled the house. These she had, as it were, led by the hand out of the very dens and lairs of that low suburban city of poverty, ignorance, and vice. Two by twos and three by threes, she had brought them out of these living graves, where they had been bound and tormented by the worst fiends of that legion of evil spirits which our Saviour drove out of the poor man in Scripture. They could not but follow when that voice so tender and that hand so gentle touched them in their bonds. And here were five hundred of them sitting before her, clothed and in their right mind, looking up meekly into her face, as if it were the face of an angel. And it was to them a better face than any angel ever showed to mankind. Tt was all alight with the glow of tender sympathy with their hu- man conditions, with a sentiment no being could feel who had not tasted the varied draughts of human experience. And, as she stood up and looked into those sun-burnt, hard, swart faces, many of them bearing scars of the vice and misery from which they had been uplifted, she spoke as never Tnan spoke, as never Tnan can speak, as only such a woman's heart and voice and eye could speak. I have listened to the most eminent revivalist preachers in America and to many of the most impressive ministers in England ; but I never heard an address more calcu- lated to melt an audience of common men than hers, and I never saw an audience more deeply moved. In diction and argument it was beautiful and powerful, but in fer- vour and pathos it was indescribable. I cannot recall a passage entire ; but one I shall never forget for the touch- ing pathos of its utterance and for the effect it produced on the congregation. She had alluded to the case of Rush, the murderer, who was once so impressed with reli- RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 253 gious convictions that his stout frame trembled from head to foot under his minister's preaching. But he had put aside these impressions, and turned away into the awful course that brought him to the scaffold. His minister, at its foot, had said to the impenitent criminal : " Farewell forever ! " Havinin^ dwelt upon tho course and end of the raurderer-^once so near the threshold of salvation — she said, Avith the deepest emotion : " I have been think- ing all the w^eek of you, costermongers, and of you, co- prolite diggers, fearing that you might be thrown from your carts or buried under an avalanche of rocks, and that you would be brought to your homes with your bruised and broken limbs. And whom would you send for first ? Why, for me, of course ; and I should go to you, and find your weak, distracted thoughts too feeble and wandering to take hold of God and Christ, and I should bury my face in the bed-clothes and say : "Fare- well forever ! " The best painter, with a thousand strokes of hip pencil, could not portray a more vivid and touching scene than these few simple words pictured before the eyes of those working men, and scores of them filled with tears they could not conceal. The last passage of her address was more affecting still for the voice, feeling, look, and motion of the speaker. Stretching out her thin and trembling hands toward the hundreds who had hung their hearts on her lips, she seemed to throw her whole soul into this utterance, as if it were to be her last to them : " Brothers, come ! Lay your hands in these feeble ones, which have been so often wrung in secret prayer for your salvation, and let us all go home together to our Father's house ! " Such hands as those washed the thorn-prints from the brow of the crucified Saviour ; and such hands he is using now to lead up into his great salvation multitudes that have hitherto been left to perish as reprobate and hope- less beyond recovery — beyond the scope and reach of grace itself. Such hands are at this great and holy work 254 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. day and night. Soft and noiseless, in the dwellings of the poor and fallen they are at work; and, following their leading, dark-faced, stalwart men, who for half a long life's length thought of no God and no Heaven but the appetites that enslaved them and the gin-shop in which they worshipped them, are now entering in pilgrim bands the wicket-gate of a new existence, singing among the sceneries of Christian faith and hope by the way the same old songs that Bunyan's Pilgrim hymned on the road to the Celestial City. But the life-work of this delicate young woman was not confined to such fervid and melting eloquence at the desk. It was not the distant Heaven above to which she laboured to lift and lead them. Her sympathy and sleep- less watch for them in these lower walks of life were equally tender and devoted. What she felt and did to this end she thus describes in a letter which I received from her, soon after the meeting referred to, in answer to some expression of admiration at her work : ** Of course, it is very exceptional work for a woman to do ; but ray excuse is that our rough Barnwell men could not be got at by ordinary means, and were living without God and without hope, until, in love for my Redeemer, I tried to gather them together. The results are, indeed, wonderful. Many of the vilest are now de- vout men, full of the Holy Ghost ; my especial pride and joy being, I think, ' the Devil of Barnwell,' for such was he called for his outrageous wickedness. He is now in- valuable as a missionary among the worst, never, strange to say, having once swerved from the narrow path that leads to life, after he first started. Still the fact remains of 80 public houses to a population of a little upward of 3,000 ; that is to say, a public-house for every forty per- sons, including women and children. So we are deter- mined at once to begin to collect funds for a small Work- ing Men's Hall, which shall afford them society without sin, and re-creation of mind without ruin of soul. For RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 255 these men have noble stiftf in them when once they get the grace of God in their hearts." If ever " Ichovre est orare" is true, it is so with such work and workers This young woman had the greatest repugnance to any publicity given to her efforts. When writing a little book on this woman-work in England, the proceeds of which were to be given to her enterprise, she insisted that I should neither mention her name nor the name of the town in which she was labouring with such devotion and success. Still she could not hide so much light made in darkness under a bushel. It would and did get abroad, little by little. Her appeal for help to private circles was responded to most generously. In- stead of a small hall, a large and elegant building was the result — a veritable working men's club-house, as well as hall — where they could and did enjoy all her heart could wish of " society without sin and recreation of mind without ruin of soul." But she never was permitted to speak in the large hall thus built at her appeal. Her flesh and blood failed her at the moment of this consum- mation. Her voice, so eloquent and inspired, was stifled by disease of the throat. For several years she has been living by the sea, an invalid, plying her pen to do a little of the work her tongue can no longer perform. All the little books she has written in these years of prostration and suffering she has consecrated to the same mission of benevolence. One whom her example led into the same field of effort, in a letter just received, thus refers to her tireless labours of love : " I went with my family to Freshwater ; and there, to my pleasure, found Ellice es- tablished. She was busy writing — slaving for Miss Robin- son ; and was finishing a little story in aid of the Blind School. Her devotion so worked on me that I have been obliged to do a little for Miss Robinson too." And who is Miss Robinson and what is her work ? This she is and does. " She herself fights a daily battle with pain and weariness which has few parallels in the 256 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. annals of even sainthood, since she suffers from spinal curvature, that would condemn most women to an invalid couch, and is only enabled to do her active work by the aid of a steel support — a strange armour in which to go forth to such conflict — a war with evils before which the stoutest heart and the strongest frame might alike fail. But to this conflict her whole energies are devoted, and, living after this manner, for such a purpose, it is not likely that she can fail in what she undertakes." No ; it is not likely she can fail, as the young lady thus " obliged to do a little for her " writes and believes. What is it this young lady, upheld on her feet by steel support and fighting such battles with weariness and pain, has undertaken to do ? Only " to establish a Soldiers' Home and Institute at Portsmouth," that great military and naval port, " where there are one thousand beer-shops and gin-palaces offering to the soldiers all the temptations to which he most easily yields, and where there is not a single place to which a decent, sober man can go for in- nocent refreshment and recreation." She only wants $20,000, and as yet only one-ralf of this trifling amount has been collected, says this other girl's appeal for her. Only twenty thousand dollars ! Of course she will get it for her Soldiers' Home, for she is known far and wide as " the soldiers' friend," her doings are recorded in official blue-books, and the daily papers have recently recorded her successful work in the camp at Dartmoor. ' Such is some of the woman- work now going forward in England, and such are many of the workers engaged in it. What a field for both have we not in all our large towns and cities ! RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 257 THE ZONE OF THE WISHING DAY. There are few children in our common schools who do not know what zones mean, and what and how many there are. They describe them on the map or globe. They can tell us how wide is each, and what countries around the earth lie within it, and what kind of weather they have through the year. Some of them, a little more ad- vanced, can tell us what kind of people live in these zones, the languages they speak, the colour of their faces, the names of their largest cities, longest rivers, and highest mountains; Every boy and girl thinks that the North Temperate Zone is the best, broadest belt around the Globe ; that the best people in the world live in it ; that it has the best climate, animals, birds and bees, and the best things that grow out of the ground. Indeed, many children may wonder how good people can live and be happy in the Frigid or Torrid Zone. But fev/ children who have studied geography in our schools, and few of their teachers, have ever traced out on the globe they use a broader zone than the Temperate or Torrid, or both put together ; a zone that is not bounded by degrees of latitude, or of heat or cold. This is the Christmas Belt, or the Zone of the Wishing-Day, and it has broadened and broadened through the centitVies since the angels wished the world a Merry Christmas over the manger-cradle of the Christ-Baby, until it now takes in all the earth's zones between the poles. It has broadened slowly but steadily until it is this very year wider than the sun's track of light. For in those cold countries of snow and ice towards the pole, which the sun does not visit in winter, and where there are no mornings for months, in huts half-buried in the earth are heard from hearts warm with parental and filial affection, " 1 wish you a Merry Christmas ! " Not in our tongue is it spoken, but in one the Universal Father understands as well as ours. Perhaps it is in the language of the Alaskan pea- 258 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. sant taught the story of the Christ-Chiid l)y a Russian missionary, or in the rude, rough speech of the Laplander to his little ones in sheepskin jackets, or of the Esquimaux of Greenland, as he sits before his thin breakfast of seal oil. Widening downward to the ot'ier pole, the wishing- zone takes in all climates, countries, races and tongues. In every printed or written language on the globe, " I wish you a Merry Christmas," finds its utterance. That ex- pression or sentiment of good will is making its way into all human speeches. If the Christmas morning wish could emit a ray of light, what a Milk3'^-Way of good will would surround and ill- umine the world ! Beginning on the eastern side of Asia, with Siberia, Japan and China, we might see it moving with the hours around the earth, broadening and brighten- ing as they awake the sleeping continents to greet the morning of the joyful wishing-day of mankind. A divine power as well as origin has given this happy day and its memory to humanity. No coalition of human powers or potentates could have brought it into the circles of the year, and all the governments of the world cannot expel it if they should combine their forces to that end. It is safe from the war of hostile creeds, for, with their sharp- est antagonisms, Christmas has become a day of common meaning to them all. The Puritans of New England thought they were* doing God service in their zeal and effort to ex- pel it from the festal days of the year. But they found that prohibitory laws and creeds were powerless against the social forces of human nature when inspired bj'^ the sentiment which made the twenty-fifth of December the great joy-day of all the millions who had read the story of Bethlehem. It is guaranteed to the future of mankind. Its interest will grow with the growth and strengthen with the strength of the Christian world. It is the Chil- dren's Day, and as long as the light and music of their lives are dear to Christian homes, so long will there be " A merry Christmas " in the hearts and on the lips of the nations. CHAPTER VIII. LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN ON THE LAW OF KINDNESS. . THE LAW OF LOVE. THE LAW OF LOVE— THE POWEB OF LOVE —LOVE FOR HATE— A KIND VOICE — WEALTH IN FRIENDS— BIRD FRIENDS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM— A dog's love for a child— THE DUTCH BOOB AND HIS HORSE- -A POOR dame's way TO PAY FOB KIND ACTS— THE EAILWAY BBIDGE-MAN — THE BRAVE MAN AT THE WHEEL— THE BBAVE GIBL AT THE OAB— THE OLD DAME AND HER COAL OF FIRE— THE FRIENDS AND THEIB FAITH— THE MEN OF PEACE AND THEIR STRENGTH— ONE MAY SAVE IF NOT GIVE LIFE— KIND WORK IN SMALL THINGS -HOW SMALL ACTS TELL ON LIFE —THOUGHTS FOB HOME LIFE. JjT/g OVE makes its own law, and writes it on the heart ^ jl^i in which it breathes and lives. No book in the world would be so large as to hold all the laws that love would write, if it told us at once all that we should feel, think, say and do for man all the days of our life. The ten laws that God wrote on stone ate fuJl of nots. All of them but one tell us what we shall not do. But when God puts his love in the heart of a man, it writes there with its own pen what he shall do to all who live near him, or whom he deals with or meets. He loves them not for the cause that God tells him he must do so. Good will to them is the breath of his own soul ; and his soul must breathe though it is not told to do so. This, then, is the law of love in the heart and life. It is not put in words. It does not tell a man how or when he shall think a kind thought, speak a kind word, or do a kind act, no more than he needs to tell his lungs when to breathe, or his blood when to run or stop in his veins. This law acts of its own self, just as the heart does when it beats or sends the blood to the brain. Quick as thought 260 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. can move, it fills the eye with a sweet light which no law put in cold words could make to shine there. It gives a kind tone to the voice which mere words could not teach the tongue or lips to breathe. It gives to the hand a warmth that the bare blood does not make, and which the man who folds it in his feels all the way to his own heart. i ;• ":? ^ ■■ < , So love has its light, its life, and law. Heaven is called a world of light. The best Book says there is no night there ; that the face of God is the sun that fills it with a day that can have no end. Now all the hearts that burn with his love here are lamps that shine with the same light that his face gives out to all who live in heaven. And the earth grows more like heaven the more of such lamps are lit on it. And a child's heart may hold as much of God's love, and make as bright a lamp of its light, as the heart of man in the prime of life. For an old man, if he dies with none of this love in him, dies a child at the dawn of life. He has not lived at all in the best sense. He has lived a mere mole in the ground. '.• ..!,. I i ' ■ ' ^" i 1 ' ■. I ' ' ' ■-').•, , . i - , '• ;) ' i > :t i.i ;.-ri- ' ' ^ ' .' ■ .I'l * • ^•. ' , ' THE POWER OF LOVE. Love has more than light, life, and law. A man may smile with it, and breathe with it in his looks, words and acts ; and it may tell him at all times what and how he should feel, speak and act to prove that he is led by it. All this is true and good. But it is not all, nor the best. Love has a power that breathes out of a good man's heart and life on bad men he meets, and makes their hearts soft like wax in the sun. Love has a power to melt down hate ; to turn out of the heart bad thoughts ; to fill the eyes that were cross with a kind light ; to bring true and kind words from lips LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 261 that have loved to speak guile ; to change a man's life ; to make him a friend of the good. The love that Christ lights up in the soul gives one power to kee|l his own heart ; to put down bad thoughts when they rise up ; to keep his lips, so that they speak no words of spite ; to keep all bad fire out of his eyes ; to keep his voice free from a sharp tone ; and to keep his hand soft and warm with a good will, when things are said and done to him which it is hard to bear. This is the great power of love — to rule a man's own thoughts and life ; to make them bright with sweet light when clouds come up which else would be dark and cold. This is the best and first work of love in the heart of a man, — to fill his own life with light and joy and peace. This it is that makes a heaven for him to go to heaven in. And this heaven on earth has God in it, just like the heaven in which His great white throne stands in light. For St. John, the good man who loved to lean on the breast of Christ, as if to make his own heart beat with the same pulse, tells us that he who dwells in love, dwells in God, and God in him. No man had known and felt how true this is so well as John. Love was on his lips all the days of his long life. There was but a small step to him from his heaven on earth to his heaven in the sky. For God and Christ were in both at the same time. So the love that Christ gives to a man to live, breathe, and sing in his heart, makes him two heavens of joy and peace ; one to walk, and work, and do good in here on the earth, and one in the sky to rest in, and to see the God he has loved and served face to face in a world that shall have no end. He who has none of the love in his heart that Christ gives, has no God nor heaven in him in this world or in the world to come. How lean, and sad, and dark, and hard must such a life be, though there were to be no life but this on earth ! But how sad to lose two lives that might be so full of peace and joy ! 262 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. LOVE FOR HATE. When a man has such a power of love given him as to fill and rule his own heart, he may be like Christ, in a small way at least. Even if he finds it out of his power to love them that hate him and treat him ill, he can pray for them. He can bless them who curse him and show him scorn and spite. He may say what Christ said for them that did worse than all this to Him : "Lay not this sin to their charge, for they know not what ^ey do." No one can say these words in truth, if his heart is not full of the love and life that Christ gives. The thoughts he is born with must be born all new, or his heart will not breathe that prayer, though he may force his lips to speak it. Love them that hate you ! Who can do it ? Christ did it ; and He tells us we must do it if we would be like Him. If we are like Him we can do it. But why should we do what it is so hard for us to do ? He tells us why. It will heap coals of fire on the man that hates us ; not to burn his head ; not to give him pain ; but to melt his heart and make him our friend. If we put forth hate for hate, then we make one hate the more in the world. This is the way the world is sown with hates ; and no good man ought to add to the crop. But if we give love for hate, then we burn up with a coal of fire one of the crop, and leave one hate the less in the world. This is the work that Christ came to do in the world ; and if we love Him, we must work with Him and for Him, in the same way and to the same end. This is the proof that we love Him. This is not all. It proves that He has given us the power to be and do like Him ; for no one can give love for hate of his own self. If all were put in print that such love has done since Christ came on earth, a houseful of books would not tell us all it has done for the good of men and the joy of God. Think of all the LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 263 liates it ha.s burnt up ; of all the bad thoughts and lives it has changed. Think of what it has done for the poor, the sick and sad. Think of the tears of grief it has dried up, ard the tears of joy it has brought to the eyes, and the light and hope it has given to the hearts of young and old, in all lands where Christ's name is known, and His law and life are loved. What the sun, with its light and heat, and the rain and dew, are to the earth and all that gi'ows in it, the love that Christ breathes and lives lor man, and gives him to feel and live, is to the world of souls, and to all the peace, and joy, and sweet thoughts and arts of grace that grow up in it. A KIND VOICE. ' • Light comes to us in the rays of the sun. So the sun must have hands or eyes to give us its light. Life must have a heart and veins to act in. Law must be put in thoughts it writes on the heart to rule the life. Power must have arms, hands and feet to do its work. Love has all these to work with, and it can put more of its light, life, law and power in a kind voice than in a kind eye or hand. There is no power of love so hard to get and keep as a kind voice. A kind hand is deaf and dumb. It may be rough in flesh and blood, yet do the work of a soft heart, and do it with a soft touch. But there is no one thing that love so much needs as a sweet voice to tell what it means and feels ; and it is hard to get and keep it in the right tone. One must start in youth, and be on the watch night and day, at work and play, to get and keep a voice that shall speak at all times the thoughts of a kind heart. But this is the time when a sharp voice is most apt to be got. You often hear boys and girls say 264 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. words at play with a quick, sharp tone, as if it were the snap of a whip. When one of thorn gets vexed you will hear a voice that sounds as ii it wore made up of a snarl, a whine and a bark. Such a voice often speaks worse than the heart feels. It shows more ill-will in the tone than in the words. It is often in mirth that one gets a voice or tone that is sharp, and sticks to him through life, and stirs up ill- will and grief, and falls like a drop of gall on the sweet joys of home. Such as these get a sharp home voice for use, and keep their best voice for those they meet else -• whore, just as they would save their best cakes and pioF, for guests, and all their sour food for their own board. I would say to all boys and girls, " Use your guest voice at home. Watch it day by day, as a pearl of great price, for it will be worth more to you in days to come than the best pearl hid in the sea. A kind voice is a joy like a lark's song to a hearth and home. It is to the heart what light is to the eye. It is a light that sings as well as shines. Train it to sweet tones now, and it will keep in tune through life." » WEALTH IN FRIENDS. Rich and proud men there are who boast of their wealth ; but they live and die poor in what one should most prize. They go through the world, work hard, and scrape up a great heap of gold ; and their lives and their hearts are poor and lean. They have been just all their days, but they have won no love from their own kind, nor of beast or bird, by kind thoughts and acts. Such a man may die with a house full of gold, but with no one to love him, he is not so rich as a dog at his death Now, a kind heart, hand, eye and voice will make a man T.ITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL f'lITLDRRN. 205 «vho is poor in gold ricli in a wealth that does him more good than gold. These he may have and use day hy day, and they will make him rich in friends ; and the love of true friends is the best wealth, in the world. There is no boy no)' girl so poor wlio may not be rich in this wealth, which mere gold does not buy. A rich man with a lean, cold heart has all sorts of coin in his purse or sti'ong-box. Some are of great, some small worth. But he holds fast to both kinds, and thinks much of them, for they make up his wealth. Now there are all sorts of coins in the wealth that love brings to him who lives it out in his life. The friends he makes in his own kind we may call the gold coins that keep their worth at all times. These he may well count up day by day, and night by niglit. These he may keep all his life long, if he keeps his heart, eye and voice kind to them. He may have his heart and life full of them, and feel rich in them, as a wealth full of light and joy. But there are coins in the bank of the heart's wealth which though not so large, make up the small change of life, and are worth much thought and art to gain. There is the love and trust that a kind boy or girl may win from beasts that work and live for man, and from birds that would sing for him. This love and trust may be made a joy to him all his life long, if his heart takes to it. It will not cost him more than a few kind words, looks and acts day by day, to make a host of such friends, and they will make those he has of his own kind more dear to him ; more than this, they will help him make more friends among men, just as he may buy dimes or large coins of gold with cents ; for a kind heart grows on all sides at once. If it grows soft and warm to the dog, horse or ox, and to all the birds that sing, it will do the same to men whom he meets and deals with. So it is true that the wealth in friends is not full if it counts not in its bank the love and trust of beast and birds. In my next I will tell you what friends a kind man made m these things. Q 266 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. '.:■■■ BIRD FRIENDS AND HOW TO MAKE THEM. There is no man so rich in this world as he who has the most true friends. And it is the heart of a man, or the love that lives and breathes in it, that makes them all, from the good God on his great white throne, to the small birds that sing and chirp in the tree-tops and boughs. All the way down from God to them, love in the heart, voice and eye, has power to make a man all the friends he likes or needs to have. And the least of these are a part of man's best wealth, He may make friends of the wild, free birds that will be a joy to him. He may do this with no cage, and their songs will be more sweet and dear to him when they are free to go and come when they please. I once saw a man at his home who was rich in his love for birds, and in their love for him. He lived in the midst Ox a deep grove, full of all kinds of trees. He had no wife nor children in his home. She was dead and they were gone. He was an old man with gray beard, blue and kind eyes, and a voice the birds loved. And this was the way he made them all his friends. While he was at work on his nico walks in the grove, the birds came close to him to pick up the worms in the fresh earth he dug up. At first they kept a rod or two from him ; but they soon found he was a kind man and would not hurt them, but liked to have them near him. They knew this by his kind eye and voice which tell what is in the heart. So day by day their faith in his love grew in them. They came close to the rake. They would hop on top of it to be first at the worm. They would turn up their eyes into his when he spoke to them, as if they said, " He is a kind man ; he loves us ; we need not fear him." All the birds of the grove were soon his fast friends, and 0ang their best songs to him. They were on the LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 267 watch for bini when he rose with the sun. They would fly down from the green tree tops to greet him with their chirp. When he had no more work to do with his rake and hoe on his walks, or when there were no more worms for him to dig up for them, he took out crusts of bread with him, and dropt the crumbs on the ground. Down they would dart on his head and feet to catch them as they fell from his hand. He had a call for them which would bring them to him. when he wished. He showed me how they loved him. He put a crust of bread in his mouth with one end of it out of his lips. Down they came like bees at a flower, and flew oft* with it crumb by crumb. When they thought he slept too long, some of them would fly in and sit on his bed-post and call him up with their chirp. They went with him to church, and while he said his prayers and sung his hymns in it, they sat on their green seats in the trees, and said and sang theirs to the same good God who cv res for them as he does for us. Thus the love and trust of birds we^e a joy to him all his life long ; and such love and tru'^t no boy or girl can fail to win with the same kind heart, voice and eye that he had. A DOG'S LOVE FOR A CHILD. I have told you how a kind heart, voice, eye and hand can make friends and bring more love to life and light in the world. In the day time God hangs but one lamp in the sky, which we call the sun ; but it is so large and bright that it gives all the light the world needs. But in the night He hangs the same sky brim-full of stars, great and small. They, too, are suns like the one that makes the day for us. Each has its ov/n world to light, 268 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. T like our sun ; but each has a few rays to spare, and it gives them to us in the night, and we love the light they lend us. Now the heart of a man or child, with God's b^^eath of love in it, will not only shine like a small sun on young and old of the same flesh and blood, but will shine at the same time like a star on beasts and birds that God gives us to help us with their strength, or cheer us with songs, or teach us what is true in love. No thing does this last like a dog. No love stands such a test as his. The man who owns him may beat him near to death, but one kind look, one kind word from that wrong man will heal the sting, or cure the bruise. The dog runs to him with all its old love and truth in its eyes. When once at the house of a friend in a green, fair land far from this, a man came in and told this of his great dog. When it was out on its walks one day, it looked down into the small blue eyes of a child that lay in its crib on wheels near a door. The child smiled at the kind eyes in that black face so near its own, and the dog smiled and wagged his bail, for he knew what the child meant, and the child knew what he meant, though each had no speech in words. From that hour the two were fast friends. Each day that the child was drawn out for air, the great black dog was by its side, proud and glad to guard it from harm. He would watch it by the hour from the far side of the street, while the nurse had it in charge. One day the child fell from a great height, and its brains were dashed out on the paved walk. The dog saw it and was the first on the spot, and was as deep in grief as if he had a soul in him like ours, to think and feel. He felt, in his way, as sad as we could feel at such a sight ; for his grief was with no hope. He knew not that there was a life to come in which that child's face should be seen once more. His grief was so great that he could not LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 269 eat. He would go and lie by the hour on the spot where the child died, and if he could have wept our tears, he would have kept it wet w^ith them night and day. The man whose he was, came to ask my friend for some pill or some kind of drink that would make him eat and sleep. Such a friend did that child make in a dog with one sweet look out of its small, blue eyes. Was not the love of such a dog worth that look ! Who says no ? THE DUTCH BOOR AND HIS HORSE. , I KNOW not which a kind man can make his best friend, a dog or a horse. He can make both love and serve him with a faith and trust which should be his joy and pride, as well as his good, to gain. When I was a small boy and went to school, too young to read, I heard a thing read of a horse that made both my cheeks wet with hot tears. The man who owned the horse lived at the Cape of Good Hope, and was called a Dutch boor, or a poor man of Dutch blood who was born on the soil of that hot land, and tilled it with the plough and hoe. He was a kind man at heart, though rough in look and speech. He loved his mare and she loved him, and was with him by day and near him by night. She was proud to have him on her back, and would dash through swamps, ponds, and fire, too, if he wished it. But one day came that was to prove the faith and love of her stout heart and the soul of the man. A great storm came down on ^the sea. The waves roared and rose as high as the hills. Their white tops foamed with rage at the winds, that smote them with all their might. The clor.ds flapped them with black wings. Night drew near, and it was a scene to make one quake with fear. Bight 270 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. in the midst of all this rage and roar of wind and sea, a great ship, with sails rent and helm gone, came in sight, Tt rode on the high, white waves, straight on a reef of rocks too far from the shore to reach it with a rope. The ship was full of young and old, whose cries for help could be heard, loud as was the voice of the storm. Their boats were gone like the .shells of eggs. There was no wood nor time to build a raft. The waves leaped on the ship like great white wolves bent on their prey. How could one soul of them all be saved ? The men on shore could but look on the sad sight. They could give no help. They had no boat nor raft ; and their hearts were sick in them. Then the Dutch boor was seen to draw near at full speed on his horse. Down he came to the beach, nor did he stop thei-^^ one breath of time. He spoke a word to her which si ; knew, and with no touch of whip or spur, she dashed ii and swam the sea to the ship's side with a rope tied to h r tail. She wheeled and stamped her way on the white surge with a row of men to the shore. There she staid but for a breath. At the soft word and touch she knew so well, she turned and once more ploughed through the suige to the ship, and brought back a load of young and old. Once more she stood on the beach, amidst tears of joy that fell from all eyes. She stood there weak, as wet with sweat as with the sea. The night fell down fast on the ship. There were still a few more left on it, and their cries for help came on the wind to the shore. The thoughts that tugged at the brave man's heart will not be known in this world. The cries from the ship pierced it through and through. He could not bear to hear them. He spoke a low, soft word to his horse. He put his hand to her neck, and seemed to ask her if she could do it. She turned her head to him with a look that meant, " If you wish it, I will try." He did wish it, and she tried, to the last pulse of her heart. She walked straight out in the wild sea. All on shore held their breath at the sight. She was weak but brave. Now JJTTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 271 and then the white surge buried her head ; then she rose and shook the brine out of her eyes. Foot by foot the neared the ship. Now the last man had caught the rope. Once more she turned her head to the beach. Shouts and prayers came from it to keep up her strength. The tug was for a life she loved more than her own. She broke her veins for it half way 'tween ship and shore. She could lift her feet no more. Her mane lay like black sea- weed on the waves while she tried to catch one more breath. Then, with a groan, she went down with all the load she bore, and a wail went out from the land for the loss of a life that had saved from death near a ship's crew of men. Thus dared and died in the sea the brave Dutch boor and his horse. They were, as friends, one in life, one in death ; and both might well have place and rank with the best lives and deaths we read of in books for young or old. A POOR DAME'S WAY TO PAY FOR KIND ACTS. No man, boy or girl is too poor, too old, or too young to do kind acts. Such acts need not be great and brave, as the world holds the deeds it crowns with praise. It is the heart that one puts in a kind act that God looks at, and which gives it all the worth it has in His sight. Some few years since, the wife of a poor man who had long been dead, though poor and old, paid for kind acts done her in a way that I will tell you of. She dwelt in a gap in the wild woods far from a town. Her one child, a girl of twelve years, lived with her, and she fed and clothed both with what she could earn bv hard toil. She kept a large lot of hens, and their eggs she took to a town ten miles from her small hut in the woods. She at first 272 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. walked all the way, for she was too poor to ride on the rail-road train that passed near her. But the man who had charge of it came to know her as she walked by the track to and fro. He was a kind man, and thought he did no wrong to the men who ^wned the road when he gave her a ride to and from the town free of charge. All the men on the train were kind to her, and loved to say a good word to hei'. Well, the day came when this poor, old dame could pay, in what was worth far more than gold, for all these kind words, thoughts and acts. Once, in the rough month of March, when the deep snows felt the sun and flowed down the high hills in deep and swift streams, and the winds blew, and the floods beat upon the bridge that crossed a deep, black chasm near her house, she heard a loud, long crash in the dead of night. The floods, with their thick block of ice, had crushed it like the shell of an egg. The night was black and wild. The winds blew and the rain fell fast In one half hour the train which had borne her to town once a week, free of charge, would be due at the bridge. The life of the kind man in charge of it, and the lives of all on board, hung, under God, on what she could do in that half hour. She did not waste one breath of time on the thought that came swift to her mind. She cut the cords of her one bed, and took the dry posts and side-beams in her arms, and climbed up to the track of the rail-road, a few rods from the steep walls of the bridge that was gone. Her young girl took both their chairs with a pan full of live coals. In quick time the dry wood was in a blaze^ and made a light that could be seen a long way. But the fire would soon go out, and they could not feed its flame with the wet, green wood in reach. The old dame took off her red gown, and put it at the end of a stick, and stuck it up on the track a few rods from the fire, and there she stood with a heart that quaked with fear, LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 273 She had done all she could. Would it save the train and all on board from a death so full of dread to think of ? She will soon know. Hark ! it comes at full speed. She hears it on the far side of a curve in the road. There ! its great red eye comes in sight, and casts its light on the rails all the way to the red gown on the pole. Sharp it screams like a live thing on the edge of death. It quakes with dread. A cry and shout run from end to end. The men at the brakes bend with all their strength to check the speed. The wheels grind so hard on the rails that they strike fire in the rain and dark. They now turn round more slow. A rod from the blaze of the bed-posts and two chairs, the train comes to a stop. On the black edge of that deep chasm, filled with the loud Hood piled high with blocks of ice, the train stops. Then all on board see what a death they have been saved from. First the kind man in charge comes to the front and looks down that chasm. Then he kneels by the still wheels, so near its edge, and sends up his thanks through the rain to God for His grace. The men with hard hands at the brakes come and kneel by his side, and thank God with hearts too full for words. Then all those on board, who had slept up to the verge of that swift death, come and kneel in line, and in a long row they thank God that He has so saved them through the means of the poor old dame and her young girl. So you see that, in this case, kind acts paid for all the thought, and for all else they cost. The man in charge of the train, and the men at the brakes judged right when they felt that they did no wrong to those who owned the road when they gave her rides free of charge. Did they not all get their pay for these kind acts ? and does not this case prove that no one is so poor, or so young that he or she may not do such acts in thought, look, word, or deed ? For, sometimes, mere looks, thoughts, or words are acts which take hold of the hearts of men and do them good. 274 ' CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. ' ' THE RAILWAY BRIDGE-MAN. In my last talk I told you of the old dame in her hut by the railroad, and how she paid for free rides on the cars. You saw how kind acts paid in their own kind to rich as well as poor men. I will now tell you of a poor man who was set to tend a draw-bridge that crossed a wide, deep stream for a rail- road track. Small ships and crafts with sails passed down this stream to the sea. When they came to the bridge this man was to move it round as you would a gate, and let them go through on their way. Well, one day one of them had just gone through when the railroad train came on to the stream at full speed. The scream of the steam-horse was loud and sharp in his ears. He had moved the bridge half way back to its place when he heard such a cry as steam could not make. It was the cry of his boy of four years whom he had let play on the bank of the stream. He had gone too near. His feet slipped, and he fell out of sight in it. Could a man have two cries in his ears at once to pierce his soul like these ? His boy was at death's door, and he could shut that door if he would leave his post. It may be this was all the child he had, and a few more breaths in the deep stream and it would die. Think of that ! He thought of it ; O, how he thought of it in one breath of time ! He thought of it with all a man's heart could hold of love for his child, but he had to think of lives as dear as his boy's was to him. There were scores of such lives close to the door of death, and in that quick death they would plunge if he left his post to save his own child. The brave, true man stood true to his post with the two cries in his ears, and deep down in his heart. He brought back the bridge to its place. The train crossed it safe like a bird on its wing. Not one on board knew what his life had cost the poor man. There were scores LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 275 in those swift cars who had dear young boys at home, and home they went to take them in their arms, and dance them on their knees. Bright-eyed ones they were in such nice clothes as the poor man's dead boy in the stream could not wear. The brave and true bridge man went down to it with all the joy and life gone out of his heart. He saw that face so dear to him lie pale and dead in the slime, and those bright curls that once touched his own gray hair with the tint of gold as he held him to his breast now blent with the coarse marsh weeds. He raised him out of the bed of the stream, and pressed the cold form to his breast. He would have been glad to give to him his own life to see him live once more, but he could not do it. The spark had been put out in the stream while the brave, true man stood to his post to save scores of lives as dear to their homes as the one he had lost was to his own. They did not ar d could not know how near they were to death, or what their lives had cost him. They flew past at such speed that they could not have seen the dead child in the stream though they had known that it lay there to save them. They did not and couli not thank the poor man for what he had done. In their bright, glad homes they did not and could not know how the light of his was put out for their sakes. So the poor man bore back to his small house his dead boy. It was as hard for him to lay that form in the grave as if he had owned half the railroad which he had watched a such cost. But He who could not, or would not save his own life, though He had power to save a world, He knew what the poor man did, and why he did it, and what it cost him to save scores of lives which, all in one sum, might be worth more to the world than the one he gave up to snatch them from death. These are acts which are good for boys and girls, for young and old, rich and poor, to read, to think of, and to 276 , CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. love. No tales of war can shew such acts as these ; none so brave, true and good ; none so void of self, so free from the love of praise and fame ; none that God holds as pearls of such worth in the lives of men. THE BRAVE MAN AT THE WHEEL. I HAVE told of poor men with brave hearts, who did acts full of love to their kind ; acts which cost them their own lives, which they did not count dear to them when they saw lives as dear as theirs nigh to death. I must now tell you of a man who did in his way what was done by the Dutch boor and his brave horse to save the lives of men from the jaws of the sea. His name was John Maynard, and he too was a poor man, with a brave heart, and true to his post, though it were in the face of death. His post was at the wheel of a steamboat on one of our great lakes, to guide it in calm and storm. And in both he was true to his work. He came to be known to vast crowds of young and old who felt sure when he was at the wheel, that he knew what was to be done and how to do it if the day was fair or foul. Though rough in look, with coarse hair, and face burnt brown by the sun, his voice, eye and hand were kind to all, and full of love to the young, for the small ones at his own home made the joy of his life. Well, one day John came to the test that was to try his soul, and to show the world what it was made of. It was a bright, hot day in June. It had been hot for weeks, and the boat was hot and dry from both its own fires and the sun. They had a large crowd of young and old on board. The land was in sight, and in less than an hour they would be at the port. They had their eyes on it, when a thin stream of smoke was seen to rise from the LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 277 hold of the .ship. One of the crew was sent down to see where it came from. Soon he came up with a white face, and said in a low voice in the captain's ear, " The boat is on fire !" The men who stood near heard the word, and it passed from end to end of the ship. There were casks of tar and lard in the hold and on deck. The wood of the boat was as dry as it could be ; and it was soon in a fierce, red blaze. All went to work for dear life to keep down the fire, but they could not check it. John stood at the wheel in the black smoke with the last ounce of steam on which the boat would bear. It was but a mile from land. The crowd were now all crouched at the bow, choked with smoke and scorched with the heat. One fourth of an hour more and all those lives would be lost in the jaws of death, if the boat could not reach the shore in less than that time. " John ! " cried the captain, " can you hold on a few breaths more ? " John was at the wheel, with its spokes on fire. His face was black and crisp ; his hands were burnt to the bone. His eyes were. blind with smoke. But his brave heart was whole. It was full of thoughts of his wife and " wee ones " at home. But he could think and did think of lives and homes as dear as his own. " Can you hold on, John, just a breath or two more ? " A thick voice came through the fire and smoke from the wheel, "By the help of God, I will!" The lips from which those words came spoke no more on earth. The boat's bow struck the land. As the crowd sprang down on it, the wheel-house fell in with a crash, and ,/ith it fell the black corpse of John, who had stood to the last breath of his life at his post to save the scores of lives now so full of joy on the shore, that through his death they might go back to the bright, glad homes they loved. Books, which one would have to count by scores, might be filled with the acts of poor men who have put self out of mind at such hours as John Maynard saw, and who gave their lives to save those from death who could not 278 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. save their own selves. It would be well for the world if more of such books were made and read. They would do the world more good than a store full of the books which are now most read. We need not go to those about war to find brave men. No book of that kind ever told us of a man more brave, or less of self in his heart, than John Maynard or the Dutch Boor. THE BRAVE GIRL AT THE OAR. I have told the boys and girls who read these short words I write for them, of the thoughts and acts which poor brave men have shown and done for their kind at the risk of their own lives. I must now tell you of a brave girl who did an act which gave her name a place it will not lose in the heart of the world. On the coast of that land on the far side of the wide sea from which we came, and whose tongue we speak, there stood a tall house on a high rock, with a great lamp at the top. to light ships and warn them in the night to keep from the shore, lest they should dash on the sharp crags and be lost. In that tall, round, white house, crowned with its lamp, there lived a man, his wife and child, a good, brave girl, with a kind heart for all who risked their lives on the sea. She knew how to trim the great lamp at the top of the house, and she loved to see its bright light shine out far on the wild deep in a night of storm. When the wind made the house rock from top to base, she lay and thought of the poor men tossed on the wLi' 3 waves, and of those they had left in their homes on the land. She had learnt to ply the oar, and to keep stroke with hor father when they went from their rock to the shore to see their friends, or to bring food for their small board. LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 279 But a night came when she was to use that oar as she had not done in all her life. That night was black with storm. The wind was fierce and loud on the sea, and the sea was full of wrath at the wind, and dashed the high white waves in its face. Both wind and sea grew more fierce and loud in the strife as the dark hours wore on. Oh, how slow they passed to the men on ships who looked and prayed for the light of day ! Now they went up on the white crest of the waves, which seemed to touch the clouds, then they went down to deeps from which they might well fear they should rise no more. In the midst of the great storm, one large ship, with helm gone and sails torn from its masts, went on the black, sharp rocks, a mile from the light-house. In one half -hour the rocks joined the winds and waves in their mad work, and broke the ship in two. The hind part went down with a crash, a groan, and a plunge, and bore with it scores of souls whose shrieks could reach no help of man. The fore pait stuck fast on the rock, as on a great spike. Nine lives were left on it, and the sea, like a starved wolf fierce with taste of blood, sprang at them with a howl. One on the wreck was a wife, with two dead babes drowned in her arms. She held them fast to her breast, as if it would warm them back to life. How slow the hours wore on ! Each was as long as a day to the poor men who clung to the wreck and kept watch for the morn. At last its first rays met their eyes, but it was long ere the sun threw the light of dawn on the scene. There were three pairs of eyes in the light-house that kept watch for the morn, and three hearts full of the same thoughts for men and ships on the sea. In such a night some of them must go on shore or sink far from the sight of land. The dawn drew up the veil, as it were, inch by inch. Those eyes swept the view with a quick, sharp glance. Yes, there was a wreck in sight when the waves went back to take their leap on it. They could see the 280 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. forms of men on it, and the wife with her dead babes at her heart could be seen through the glass. The storm was as fierce and as loud, and the waves as wild, white, and high as when they drove the ship on the rocks. The man who kept the light-house was brave, and had more than once put his life at risk to save those near to death, but he at first shrank from this new test of love for his kind. His brave girl, with a heart more stout than his at such a scene, stood by him. She put her hand on his arm, and said, with a voice and look that made him blush for his first thought of risk, " Father, we must not see them die. I will go with you in the boat." The rough-clad man looked at the girl as if proud to die with her in such an act. The wife felt the same. The two were her all on earth, but she helped them to push off" the boat that bore them on the wild sea, whose waves seemed white with wi-ath. She stood and saw it, now lost to the eye in the yeast of foam, now for a breath of time on the crest of a high wave. The brave girl kept stroke with her oar, and her heart grew stout as they rose and sunk. Each time they rose they were more near to the wreck. Soon they could hear the shout of the men on board, and see their hands put forth for help. Yard by yard, rod by rod, the boat drew near to save them, and they could see who were in it. Now it was in reach of the wreck, and as it rose and fell by its side one by one they dropped to its hold. The wife with her two dead babes was brought down safe, and she found in the brave girl what they all saw and felt, one made and sent by God to do a work which his angels of love and help that fly on wings might well be glad to do. Now what makes the act of this young girl a pearl of great price in the deeds which the world holds in its best wealth, is the fact that she did not do it for the praise which comes from man. She had no such thought in her heart when she and her father put out on the wild sea on that gray mom. If no one in the world but he and those LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 281 whom they brought from the wreck were to know what she did, she would have done it with the same joy at the act. But it was known all through the world. The Queen heard of it, and felt that it set a new star in her crown and a new pride in her heart that such souls were found in the poor of her realm. Ships have borne her name, and showed it with pride at their prows at the ports of far-off lands. Now, my young friends, can all of you, can one of you, tell her name ? If not, ask those who can. THE OLD DAME AND HER COAL OF FIRE. The Good Book tells how to treat those who wrong us ; how to melt down the hate or scorn in their hearts and make them our fast friends. It is to do good to them ; to give soft words for sharp words, and kind acts for bad acts ; and we are told that such kind thoughts, words, and acts, will bo like coals of fire on the heads of those who treat us ill and hate us. But if such kind acts should not do this, none the less must we keep to them, just as Christ did and told us to do the same, though they should not change the mind of those who wrong us by word or deed. But few men are so hard of heart as to stand out when we give them love for hate, good for bad acts. There was once a poor old dame who had her fruit stand near the park in New York, and she stood by it day and night, in cold and heat, all the year round, and lived and fed and clothed her small ones at home out of what she sold at one or two cents at a time. She wore a poor dress, and looked as if her lot was hard in life, and so it was. But she was rich in faith, and her face, though brown and hard; wore a smile, and her voice was not sharp R 282 . CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. nor her eyes cross when much tried by bad boys or worse men. Well, one night, as she sat by her stand in the cold, a rough man of the sea, the worse for drink, came up with a ship-mate as drunk as he was, and said to him : " Now let us have some fun with this old dame. Just see how I will make her mad and burst with rage." With these words he struck her stand with his foot, and sent it off a rod on to the sidewalk. Her fruit ran this way and that way in the dirt, and was quite bruised and spoiled. The rough man then stood and looked in her face with scorn, to see if he could not make her rage burn and blaze Mke fire. This sight was to be the fun he was to have in the act. She looked at him with no hate in her eyes. She said to him, with a voice soft and low, " My son, may God forgive you as I do !" She did this in her heart ; he saw and felt it in her look and voice, and with both she asked God to do the same. What a change came on and through him. Where now was his fun ? The coal she had put on his head now made him feel its heat. It was not to burn but to melt ; and it did melt him, till his heart was soft and his eyes full of tears. His drink lost its power on him. He came to a new mind, thought, and life. He ran here and there, and picked up her fruit. He took out all the cash he had, and begged her to take it. He begged her to take his arm, and let him guard her back safe to her home ; and as he urged it he said, " Why, I should be more proud to walk home with you than with the most rich belle in New York." That was the old dame's coal of fire. She had read of such coals in the Good Book. But if she had not read of them there, if Christ had not said in words that she must give love for hate and good for ill, she would have done what she did, for the cause that His mind was in her and must come out of her in just such acts as she did to the rough man of the sea, who, in his drink thought it fun to wrong her and make her mad with rage. Now it takes a LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 283 great deal of the mind of Christ to dwell in the heart of man, boy, or girl, to make him or her act as did the old dame in this case ; but all may have it if sought for in truth and faith. And there is no one thing that makes a man so like Christ in power as to have this mind that was in him. Why, with it this old dame, as one might say, put a new heart in a bad man, and, it may be, led him to a new life all his days. . THE FRIENDS AND THEIR FAITH. There is a sect of men, on both sides of the wide sea, who will not take up arms to light in war, nor hire, nor pay men to do it. For this they have had much to bear. They have been put in jail ; their goods have been sold to pay the fines put on them for their faith in Christ's words, which, they are sure, teach that no one who loves Him, and loves men as he did, can raise the hand to kill one for whom He died. There was once a great war in Ireland, where men of the same race and tongue, and who claimed to have faith in the same God and Christ, fought like wild beasts, slew, burnt, and worked the work of fiends more than of beasts ; for beasts, such as wolves, but kill what they need to eat. Well, the Friends in this sad land and time, were in a sad case. They stood there with a fire in front and rear, and it roared and blazed on them as if it would burn them u}). The men of war tried t,o drive them from their faith ; to make them fight, now for this side, now for that. They were as mad as they could be, and did all they could to make the Friends take up arms. They put on them pcom, hate and wrong of all kinds to drag them down from their life of peace and good will to all. But these brave men, of soft words and stout hearts, stood fast and firm to their 284 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. faith. No fire, nor sword, nor door of jail could scare them, for the face of Christ smiled on their souls, and they heard His voice and step by their side, and He helped them to walk with and like Him. He gave them of his power to melt the wrath of theii' foes. And that power was love, and it burnt like a coal of fire on their heads. And this was the way it burnt : The two mad sects who were at war could and did slay and burn at their bad will. They made the land red with homes in a blaze, and the sky black with their smoke. But they could not bleed nor burn out the faith the brave Friends had strong and warm in their hearts. These men of kind eye, hand and voice could and did wield arms with an edge too keen for steel swords to match them. These arms were thoughts and acts of love to their foes on each side. When a day or night of blood was done, they would go out with their wine and oil, like him Christ tells us of, and they would bend down, and, with a hand and voice which He had made soft, would raise poor men out of their blood, bind up their wounds, bring them to their own homes, and watch and tend them, and say t^ their sad souls words of cheer. With these arms the Friend fought both night and day, and their foes, on both sides had to yield to a force which their sharp steel swords' could not cope with. They could and did slay with hot wrath men who put their trust in swords, but these who armed their hands with deeds of love, and put their trust in Christ, and walked and talked like Him, had a power which they could not break nor bend. So it came to this : When the men of war rushed on a town, their first cry was, ** Spare the Friends ! " and they did spare them, and they were safe in the midst of the fire, in the midst of the hail of lead and streams of blood that fell and fiowed round them. Mad and beast-like as both sides in the strife were, they would as soon have dried up the springs at which they drank day by day, as to have quenched the life of that love which Christ had put in LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 285 the hearts of these brave men, and which flowed out in such kind deeds, the same to foe as friend. Thus did the Friends in that time of hate, and fire and blood prove in their own case this truth of so much worth, that, " When a man's ways please the Lord, He makes his foes to be at peace with him." THE MEN OF PEACE AND THEIR STRENGTH. " When a man's ways please the Lord, he makes his foes to be at peace with him." So says the Good Book, which, I hope, all the boys and girls whom I write for have learn- ed to read and love. A nd these words which it says to us have been proved true in the lives of good men in all times. Now, no man's ways please the Lord so well as when he does right, and is good, kind and true to all round him. If he does this, his foes will li)e at peace with him. More than this, he will have no foes at all. I have told you how this was proved in the case of the "Friends" in Ireland. It was the same with Friends in this wide, wild world in the West, where the red man made such long, fierce war on the whites who did not treat them well, and whose ways did not please the Lord for that cause, but who made the red men their foes, and put their trust in the sword. I hope you have all heard of the great and good Penn, and know that one of our large States was called by his name. Well, he was a Friend, who crossed the sea with men of his own faith in God, to build up a State in that faith and love. He and they knew what wild, fierce men held the land he wished to have. He knew what long wars had been waged by them with the whites, who came in years gone by. He knew Tvhat they thought of the whites, and in what fear and hate they held them. But he had full faith that if 286 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. liis ways with these red men .should please the Lord, He would make them live at peace with him. He saw and felt it clear what kind of ways these should be ; that he should be good, true and kind to them ; that he should not cheat them, or take a piece of land from them that he did not pay well for ; that he should make them feel that he was their best friend, whom they could trust at all times. Well, the good and wise Penn thought just right. These ways with the red men did please the Lord, and He made them at peace with him and with the Friends who lived in the same State, and held on to the same ways when he had gone to his rest. When white men came who left these ways and put their trust in the sword to put down the red men who rose at their wrongs, the Friends were safe in the midst of fire and blood. Scarce one of them fell, though scores round them were shot down and had their homes burnt to the ground. When there were few whites who lived far back in the land, and feared death hour by hour, day and night, the Friends went out to their work with no guns, nor swords, nor clubs in their hands, with full faith in God that He would shield them. And He did keep them safe from death and fear, for their ways had pleased him, and He made the red men their fast friends. Not one of them lost his life who held to this faith and these ways. There were a few who let go their hold on both, and they were shot. When one of them through fear or lack of faith, took a gun with him, the red man took him to be one of the whites whom they were at war with, and they shot him at first sight. The life of Penn and his ways with the wild red men of the land on which he built a great State, are good to read. I should much like to write it all out in full, and make a book of it for the " wee ones " of many homes. But what I have here said may lead them to read more in the large books of what that good m& i was, and did, and taught by his ways that so pleased the Lord. LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 287 ONE MAY SAVE IF NOT GIVE LIFE. All life of man, beast, bird, fly or worm is of God. No one but God can give life. It is his great gift to all things that move and breathe on earth, in the sky or sea. No king nor man of might can breathe a breath of life into a bird, bee or fly. But next to this great work of God a child may do. He may save life, and see and feel the joy it gives to small things that fly, walk or swim. A man who sang sweet songs the world loves, said in one of them, that he would not count his friend the man who would put his foot in scorn or hate on a worm. For the man who does that is most apt to do or say a thing to a friend that shows a lack of kind thought. These thoughts lead me to say a word of my own self. I was the fifth son of a poor man who made shoes, and fed and clothed ten boys and girls with his awl and knife. His heart was brimful of kind thought for man and beast. No child in town could be sick two days but that he knew each turn for good or bad in its state. He would go a mile when his day's work was done to ask how it was with a sick babe, and I have seen him weep at the death of one two miles off, as if it were his own. When a storm of wind and rain came on and bent the great trees, he would look out and speak of the men on the sea. In the midst of the night, when the rain fell thick and loud on the roof, he would wake and say with such a sad tone, " It rains on their gi'aves ! " All his life long this thought made him sad, — " It rains on their graves ! " The graves fi.ve scores of years old, as well as the last made in the churchyard in sight of our house. His thought for beasts, birds, and all things that breathed with life was just as kind. He would buy a poor old horse on his last legs and keep him till he died of old age, and then mourn at his death as if the beast had a soul in him that God would own and bless on the 288 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. far Hide of ^ho gravo, and the dear old man would dwelJ on the tale the dead horse might tell of him for lack of care and kind deeds. In the far end of our home-lot there was the grave of these old worn-out beasts, and he would go to it some- times once a week to look at their bones, as a inan would walk to the graves of dear ones gone. I have seen him scores of times come back with slow steps and bent head, with his heart full of sad thoughts. I can see him now with bare head, black hair dashed with gray, brushed back and stiff from his brow, with his " specs " tied on with green tape for bows, and with his hands clasped at his back. I hear his voice and its tone and sigh as he told where he had been, and how he feared that the white bones would move with life, and each dead horse would speak to him and charge him with hard speech and deed to them. Kind old man ! If they could have spoke they might have called to his mind thoughts and acts for them which he had dropt out of count. I was the son of such a man, and fear I learnt of him but a small part of what his life o\ight to have taught me. But I learnt some of his kind thought for beasts, birds and things with small lives which folks are apt to think so cheap. It came to please me much to save one of these small lives on the brink of death, and to see its joy as it raised its wings and flew off to its kind in the air or trees. I thought I had done the next thing to what God does when I saved such a life. I would sit half an hour at a time by a tub at the mill full of that sweet juice that bees so much love. They came in swarms from their hives all bent on a good load to bear home. Soon one would risk too much, and fall in and try in vain to get out. Its wings could not lift it out of the thick juice, and soon it lay still on it, too weak to try once inor6 for life. Then I would put out a straw to it, which it would grasp with its small hands and feet while I raised it out and laid it on a board in the sun. There it soon LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 289 felt the light and heat. It shook its wings, and l)uzzed with new hope and life, then flew off to its hive like a thing raised from the grave. I felt th^t that small life was as near my own gift as it could be. I had saved it, which was next in worth to what God had done for the bee. Such lives soon came to have a new worth to me, and I found that 1 could not take them in the sports which were so dear to me when a boy. I loved to fish and to shoot birds, but one day as I put the barbs of a hook through a live worm, a new thought came to me that such sport as that was not quite the thing, so I dropt the pole in the brook and went home. I still loved to shoot birds, but one day I broke the leg of a blue jay, when he cried with a voice so like a child's, and a score of his mates filled the air with such screams of " Stop thief ! " that I felt like a Cain with hands red with blood I had no right to shed. So I went home a,nd felt that I could not find sport in that sort of thing, and gave it up. Now, boys and girls, so full of the joy of their own young lives, are more apt to think less of the lives of birds, bees, and the like, than when they come to full age. Why is this ? I would ask them. How can they find it a joy to put out a life that no one but God can give ? Let them try the thing which I have told them of, and see what will come of it. Let them see how many lives they can save, and see if they will not find a joy in such sport. KIND WORK IN SMALL THINGS. There is a work each day and a place for small hands and kind hearts to do. Some of these things are so small that men may not think of them. But a good heart shows its best self in small things as they are not done for 290 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. praise, but just as one breathes, or moves and acts as his thought guides him. The best life is made up of all these small things, for they best show the heart that is '^a one, old or young. The boy or girl who will not step on a worm, or kill a bee, wasp or fly in sport, will show the same mind in large things when the time comes to do them. Now there is a small thing I wish all boys and girls who live in large towns to do for the good of scores on scores of old and young. I have thought that ten legs are broke each hour of the day in the world by the skins of fruit dropt on the walks. In the night they are not seen, and men slip on them and come down with all their weight and break their legs or arms. To drop the peel of such fruit on the walk is to set a trap for the limbs of those who pass. How much pain this small thing, done in sheer lack of thought, has cost men on both sides of the great sea ! When I see such a peel of fruit on the walk, as I do day by day, I say to myself, " Here is a trap set to catch some one's leg and break it." So I strike it off with my cane, and feel that I have spoilt the bad work it might else do. This is a small thing ; but will not all the boys and girls that read this think of it, and do as I do ? Will they not think twice while they eat fruit in the street, and not drop the peel or skin on the walk, but throw it oiF the flags, so that no one may slip and fall on it and break a limb. If those who drop such peels on the walk could see a man fall on them, and see him borne to his bed to lie there in pain for months, they would think when they ate fruit in the streets and not set such traps for the feet of those who pass in a crowd. There is one thing more a boy or girl with a kind heart may do, and it will do them much good, and train them for life to do it. That is when they see a peel or skin of fruit on the walk, to kick it off and see it in the broad street where the wheels will grind it in their ruts. This they can do in the wink LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 291 of the eye, with one quick stroke of the foot, and each time they do it, their hearts will grow with a kind thought which will shape their lives and make them bless the world with good deeds. This some may say is a small thing to teach boys and girls to do, and some may laugh at it ; but there are few things that could so well train them to kind acts day by day. I will think that some of them will set out in life in this course of thought and deed. f,' ■-7 ;■•• HOW SMALL ACTS TELL ON LIFE. Some one has said that life is made up of small acts and things. This is true of most lives. Few are the men in this world who have the chance to do great deeds and get fame from them, but no man has lived in the world whose life did not take shape from small acts done when he was a child. In one sense the man is not so old as the boy, for he is the boy first, and in the soft years when thoughts, words and acts take fast hold of his mind and heart and give this or that course to his life. Now, there are small acts that boys and girls may do with no thought of what they mean or to what they tend, but which may give their whole lives a course that wiU take from them much of their worth in the world. I have dwelt much on the thoughts and acts that show a kind heart, and train it to good deeds and make them its chief joy ; but there are acts which a boy or girl may think too small to speak of, but which I wish to guard them from. When I see a man do these things I feel that if he knows what in truth they mean, his heart is not kind, and that his life lacks sun and light ; and I am sad to say that I see now and then men who think they are all right do these things — men who claim to stand in a 292 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCKS. high rank, to have been to school all their youth long, to have read books, and to know how men thus read and taught should act. Now let me tell you what I have .seen them do, and what I want you to shun all the days of your life. I have seen such men do these things in church. If they did not like what the man of God said from the desk, they would take up a book and read it right in his face and eyes. Or if they thought he spoke too long, to give him a hint that it would be well for him to stop, they would take out their watch and look at it in his sight. Now, to my mind, to do one of these things is just as bad in thought as to rise up and walk out of the house. It is a wrong done to him who speaks, and who tries to speak his best for the good of all. It is a wrong done to him who hears with such a mind. He who goes up to the desk to preach does .so to pay what he owes to the man who hears, to give him his best thoughts for his best good. He tries to pay him that debt. He who sits in the pew comes with a debt on him both to God and man. His debt is to hear from the first to the last word what is said to him from the desk. If he pulls out his watch or looks in a book, holds down his head, or shuts his eyes, as a sign that his ears are shut too, he spurns what he owes to God and man. And now I am on this line of thought let me say to all the boys and girls who read these words, there are things which may not seem so wrong as these which you must shun at church. Some folks act as if the church was a jail, in which they must be shut up for an hour and a half, to be out of it as soon as the clock strikes the hour. While they stand to hear God asked to bless them, you may see their hands on the pew door for a rush at the last word, and you will see that those who come in last are first to go out. In no land where Christ is preached can this rush out of church be seen as it is in this, we think. He loves so LITTLE TALKS WITH SMALL CHILDREN. 293 well. What must He tliink of such acts ! If one hour and a half in God's house on earth tires them so, how can they wish or be fit to spend a life with no end in His house in Heaven ! Now, dear boys and girls, will you not think of these things and learn how to shun all these acts and the thoughts that lead to them in God's house ? THOUGHTS FOR HOME LIFE. I HAVE made now a score of small talks with the boys and girls. I have told them much of the law of love as shown in the acts and lives of those who did not think of self when men stood at the gate of death, or in great need of their help. I have tried to show how all, both young and o]d, ought to feel and act for beasts and birds, as well as for their own kind ; how that kind thoughts aiid acts for things that have no speech but that of their eyes to thank us, are well paid for in the love they show us. When I first began these talks, I meant they should be bright and soft with the law of love in all its paths and proofs, in hope that all the young who read them would let the same law rule their lives, and fill them with joy and make them a joy to all who should know them. In my last talk, I spoke of acts which I had seen men do at church, and which I much wished boys and girls to shun, as they were acts that broke the law of love and the law of right. I hope they will keep in mind what I said of such acts and not be led to do the like. Now I wish to speak to them of acts at home which I hope they will shun, though they see them done, day by day, at each meal and hour. They are not wrong things. They show no bad thoughts. The best of men do them, and are not a whit the worse for it at heart. But for all that, I want 294 CHIPS FROM MANY BLOCK?. to urge you to shun them, for your own good and for those who think them worse than they are. The first of these small acts is to eat with your knife — to load its sharp end with food and put it in your mouth with an edge on each side for an inch in length. You may think this too small a thing to speak of, but small things make a mark which men are apt to bear with them through life — a mark which tells how they were brought up in youth. Go where you may, if you do this small thing as a guest or host, it will mark you to your hurt in the mind of those who sit near or see you. They will say of you in their thoughts what they will not say in words : " There is a man who wears good clothes ; he may be good and rich, and know much too, but see how he was brought up at home ! He eats with his knife ! " Now, no man, be he good and rich, and well-read m books, can eat with his knife and not have this and more thought and said of him. Dear boys and girls, will you not think of this, and learn now to eat with your fork and not with your knife at home ? If you do not learn to do this at home you will not learn to do it at all ; and you will go out in the world with a mark which good clothes, a rich purse, and a good heart and life will not hide — a mark which will work to your hurt in the minds of those whom you would like to make your friends. I had thought to speak of two or three more small things which all boys and girls should learn at home. I wished to ask them not to cool their tea, but to drink it from their cup, thus to shun a way which makes its mark, too, on men as hosts or guests. But I have no more room left for such thoughts. I must now say Good-bye to the boys and girls whom I have talked to for years. Good- bye means "God be with you!" and I mean this in its best sense when I say it. "A Royal Road to the Study of Literature." N. Y. Tribune. EVENINGS IN THE LIBRARY. Bits of Gossip about Books, and those who Write them, By GEORGE STEWART, Jr., Author op "The Story of the Great Fire in St. John, N. B., &c. 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