or unless the boys have stolen her, which seldom happens more than nine times in ten. To own a boat is next door to being a pawnbroker-one may do so much loaning. "If I were President," says Vater, "and knew a man who had a temper and a boat and could keep both, I would make him keeper of 'Squam Light for life." There is some compensation: boats never have the horse-ail, nor spavin, nor the blind staggers; but, for all, an old boat is a pitiful thing. Even after her seaworthiness is a thing of the past, she passes from owner to owner, and each will discover some promise in her,—some sign of the breath of life. And so one nails and calks, tars and pitches, and finally launches her only to find her memory grown so poor that she has forgotten how to swim. Then the owner "puts her away." The next possessor hath the same hope as the former. She is tarred and calked and nailed and launched again, and the owner sees how sad a sight is a boat without a memory. We are a nautical people and boast of our nurseries for seamen, but we have no asylum for superannuated dories. A digression, a decided digression.

To return. Boating was their daily delight. Up the river on the tide, or down it to the bar at the harbor-mouth, for a sunset view, when the great Artist had painted upon the far-off curtain of their camp miraculous pictures that faded, faded, faded, as they looked and the summer night drew on. Then, if the tide had turned, they would fall in with it, sometimes in a silence so deep one could almost hear a bubble swim, and, floating thus, the white tent peered out of the deepening dark too soon.

They depended not wholly for their boating upon their little Idler, however. Friend Craig and lady from their summer nest on "Biskie" Island would come running down in their witch of a Julia, touch at the beach, take the campers aboard, and then for a breezy stretch to the bay, until the ladies said "put about." Or, he came alone for Vater, which meant the same sail over, a beaching of the boat, and a plunge into the clear gurgling water of some sandy basin. It was a pleasure only to look upon her owner's love for his boat and boating. If the wind failed, he seemed to feel it was the fault of the craft, and if the breeze surprised her so that she dipped her lee-rail a moment, how his laugh would ring over the river!

Sometimes, of a morning, Vater would walk around the shore at high-water mark. For every bit of drift-wood he imagined a brief

VOL. IV.-40

history, or some little episode in its career. That little chip, what woodman in what faraway forest felled the tree? That bit of a boat's rail, that broken thwart of a dory, had the hand of a drowning man clung to either? He gathered them all, with their fancied episodes, their adopted histories, as one gathers a handful of wild-flowers that are fragrant only with memories of the woods that grew them. They all ended in smoke, but first they boiled the tea-kettle beautifully.

When Sunday came, Vater felt a preaching mood upon him. The churches were far away in different directions, and of many faiths. Their bells, as of one mind, tolled faintly over land and water upon the morning air. Gattin was reading, Mädchen was on the shore keeping Sunday-school, with rocks and shells for scholars. Vater took a turn also on the shore, apart. His mood mastered him. He selected a pulpit,—a rock in the shade of a larger one. It had no cushion, he noticed early. He thought he would not like to become the settled incumbent where the pulpit-seat was so unyielding. The audience was thin. A crow in the distance personated the sexton. The choir consisted of a bird or two, who sang as sweetly as though their salary of crumbs had been doubled lately. The trill was perfection-for a country choir. There was no late-comer, no crying baby, no creaking boots. There was no fear of offending the heaviest man in the society. The ceiling was not frescoed: the Builder had said, "Let it be blue," and it was blue. The beginner liked the church, and the beginning of his ministry. But the text. There were texts everywhere. Looking down, his eye fell upon the sole of an old shoe; he took it for his text, and began: "Sole, thank God for this day. Where the feet are that cast thee off, He only knows. Perchance they are wandering yet, or, it may be, they rest for

ever.

How often thou hast gone astray, how often thou hast found the way thorny and crooked, who can tell? Much thou hast borne: much has been required of thee."

It was a sermon with a single meritbrevity; an while the preacher himself grew drowsy, in his ear a voice seemed to echo the varying words with a deeper meaning, in a more solemn undertone: "Soul, thank God for to-day. When thou wilt leave the mortal feet, Heaven only knows. They may wander long, or shortly rest forever. Soul, how often hast thou gone astray, how greatly thou hast failed in duty to thy brother soul, how often thou hast found the way

stony and crooked, God only knows. Much hath been given: much will be required of thee."—"Amen," uttered the preacher. He descended from the pulpit with that voice in his ears, and wandered along the wavering water-line. Suddenly he came upon the wing of a sea-bird. It was wet, and black, and glossy-a broken wing. His fancy went back to the time when those sea-wet feathers were but down, when a mother's wings overspread the nest under warm skies, among sweet odors. With the wing grown stronger, he followed it in its northern flight, and he heard "The clams are done."

Never had fancy such a sudden recall! It was Diener's voice from the camp. He looked thither, and there fluttered the signal, "Visitors." Vater returned to the camp and there was bonny Rockwood, the publisher, -who had walked three miles from town,peppering, salting, and preparing to swallow a clam the size of a saucer, as if it were an "everyday" affair. He had missed the sermon, but he received the benediction-" the

MY

Lord be with you." Not a moment to soon, however.

If either of the sea-gulls balancing above 'Squam river on the 22d of July kept diary, he would have noted a little boat making its way townward with a favoring tide. It contained Vater and company. There was tan enough on their faces to make the fortune of a black-and-tan terrier. The drinkables were all drunk; the eatables all eaten; and the breakables all broken. Vater pulled slowly, almost sadly. Mädchen, true to the tenor of childhood, had drowsily dropped her lath oar overboard and was coiled up in the bow-asleep. Gattin, who never had steered so carelessly, assumed an attitude worthy of Rachel or Niobe, and Diener, in fancy, was already joyously scouring the tanned tinware at home. And Vater those days of continued sunshine had dyed so deeply that his best friend could recall him only by degrees when he resumed his daily duties in the inevitable money-mill. Blessings on the Corporations that are beginning to be human !

And live a lie.

Clothed with this lie.

The Bane of the Republic. THERE can be no doubt that the prolific source of all our notable political corruptions is office-seeking. Almost never does a political office come to a man in this country unsought; and the exceptions are very rarely creditable to political purity. When men are sought for, and adopted as candidates for office, it is, ninety-nine times in every hundred, because they are available for the objects of a party. Thus it is that selfish or party interest, and not the public good, becomes the ruling motive in all political preferment : and the results are the legitimate fruit of the motive. Out of this motive spring all the intrigues, bargains, sales of influence and patronage, briberies, corruptions and crookednesses that make our politics a reproach and our institutions a byword among the nations. We are in the habit of calling our government popular, and of fancying that we have a good deal to do in the management of our own affairs; but we would like to ask those who may chance to read this article how much, beyond the casting of their votes, they have ever had to do with the government of the nation. Have they ever done more than to vote for those who have managed to get themselves selected as candidates for office, or those who, for party reasons, determined exclusively by party leaders-themselves seekers for power or plunder-have been selected by others? It is all a " Ring," and has been for years; and we, the people, are called upon to indorse and sustain it.

To indorse and sustain the various political rings is the whole extent, practically, of the political privileges of the people of the United States. The fact is abominable and shameful, but it is a fact "which nobody can deny." It humiliates one to make the confession, but it is true that very rarely is any man nominated for a high office who is so much above reproach and so manifestly the choice of the people that his sworn supporters do not feel compelled to sustain him by lies and romances and all sorts of humbuggery. The people are treated like children. Songs are made for them to sing. Their eyes are dazzled with banners and processions, and every possible effort is made to induce them to believe that the candidate is precisely what he is not and never was the candidate of the people. Our candidates are all the candidates of the politicians, and never those of the people. Our choice is a choice between evils, and to this we are forced. Second and thirdrate men, dangerous men, men devoured by the greed for power and place, men without experience in statesmanship, men who have made their private pledges of consideration for services promised, men who have selected themselves, or who have been selected entirely because they can be used, are placed before us for our suffrages, and we are compelled to a choice between them. Thus, year after year, doing the best we seem to be able to do, we are used in the

interest of men and cliques who have no interest to serve but their own.

And all this in the face of the patent truth that an office-seeker is, by the very vice of his nature, character, and position, the man who ought to be avoided and never indorsed or favored. There is something in the greed itself, and more in the immodesty of its declaration in any form, which make him the legitimate object of distrust and popular contempt. Office-seeking is not the calling of a gentleman. No man with self-respect and the modesty that accompanies real excellence of character and genuine sensibility can possibly place himself in the position of an office-seeker, and enter upon the intrigues with lowminded and mercenary men, which are necessary to the securing of his object. It is a debasing, belittling, ungentlemanly business. It takes from him any claim to popular respect which a life of worthy labor may have won, and brands him as a man of vulgar instincts and weak character. We marvel at the corruptions of politics, but why should we marvel? It is the office-seekers who are in office. It is the men who have sold their manhood for power that we have assisted to place there, obeying the commands or yielding to the wishes of our political leaders. It is notorious that our best men are not in politics, and cannot be induced to enter the field, and that our political rewards and honors are bestowed upon those who are base enough to ask for them.

A few of the great men of the nation have, during the last thirty years, yielded to that which was meanest in them, and become seekers for the august office of the presidency. Now to wish for a high place of power and usefulness is a worthy ambition, especially when it is associated with those gifts and that culture which accord with its dignities and render one fit for its duties; but to ask for it, and intrigue for it, and shape the policy of a life for it, is the lowest depth to which voluntary degradation can go. These men, every one of them, have come out from the fruitless chase with garments draggled, and reputation damaged, and the lesson of a great life-lived faithfully out upon its own plane-forever spoiled. How much more purely would the names of Webster, and Clay, and Cass shine to-day had they never sought for the highest place of power; and how insane are those great men now living who insist on repeating their mistakes! It would be ungracious to write the names of these, and it is a sad reflection that it is not necessary. They rise as quickly to him who reads as to him who writes. The great, proud names are dragged from their heights, and made the footballs of the political arena. lofty heads are bowed, and the pure vestments are stained. Never again, while time lasts, can they stand where they have stood. They have made voluntary exposure of their weakness, and dropped into fatal depths of popular contempt. Now, when

The

we remember that we are ruled mainly by men who differ from these only in the fact that they are smaller, and have not fallen so far because they had not so far to fall, we can realize something of the degradation which we have ourselves received in placing them in power.

What is our remedy? We confess that we are wellnigh hopeless in the matter. Bread and butter are vigilant. Politics to the politician is bread and butter, and we are all so busy in winning our own that we do not take the time to watch and thwart his intrigues. The only remedy thus far resorted to—and that has always been temporary-is a great uprising against corruption and wrong. We have seen something of it in the popular protest against the thieves of the New York Ring. What we need more than anything else, perhaps, is a thoroughly virtuous and independent press. We believe it impossible to work effectually except through party organizations, but such should be the intelligence, virtue, and vigilance of the press and the people that party leaders shall be careful to execute the party will. We need nothing to make our government the best of all governments except to take it out of the hands of self-seeking and office-seeking politicians, and to place in power those whom the people regard as their best men. Until this can be done, place will bring personal honor to no man, and our republicanism will be as contemptible among the nations as it is unworthy in itself.

The Matter of Size.

If a greyhound were as large as an elephant, and had the power and stride that would correspond with his size, he would kill himself in running a mile. The material of his frame would not stand the strain. The draught-horse is never a race-horse. Beyond a certain weight, the loss of the power of fleetness begins. Nature puts her materials into the best forms for securing her objects. The swallow is swifter than the swan. Ship-builders have found, to their sorrowful and disastrous cost, that above a certain size a ship is profitless. Taking into consideration the material of which ships are made, the modes of handling them, and the needs of commerce, two ships, possessing the aggregate capacity of the Great Eastern, are worth twice as much as she. The statement will doubtless be good for all time. There is a limit, fixed by nature, in this matter of size, on all the instrumentalities of human commerce of every sort, beyond which results are unsatisfactory. There will never be a railroad with a twenty-five-feet gauge; there will never be another Great Eastern; and there will never be another Boston Jubilee, of the magnitude of that which closed its performances on the fourth of July.

The great gathering of musicians which Mr. Gilmore's enterprise secured was without a precedent in the world. We doubt whether any man but Gilmore could have done what he did. We doubt whether it could have been done in any city but Boston. The undertaking was gigantic, and it was carried through

with marvelous efficiency. The monster experiment was not a failure in any respect except in the fact that its effects did not at all correspond with its size. I: demonstrated the fact that beyond a certain point of magnitude and numbers neither choruses nor orches tras can increase their power of musical expression an impression. One thousand singers in Music H., would have been better handled, and would have duced a larger and finer musical impression, the twenty thousand in the Coliseum. We are glad the experiment has been tried, and that it is proved that every city can have just as good music in its own bas and churches as can be had by gathering together the picked men and women of all the cities of the world. Yet it was a splendid experiment to try, and none bet jealous niggards will fail to award to those who have tried it the great honor that belongs to them.

Modern Preaching.

WE cannot more forcibly illustrate the difference between ancient and modern preaching than by ima gining the translation of a preacher of fifty years ago to a modern pulpit. The dry and formal essays, the long homilies, the dogmatism and controversy that then formed the staple of public religious teaching would be to-day altogether unsatisfactory in the hear ing, and unfruitful in the result. Experience has proved that Christians are more rarely made by argaments addressed to the reason than by motives addressed to the heart. The reliable and satisfactory evidences of Christianity are found less in the sacred records than in its transformations of character and its inspirations of life. Though a thousand Strasses and Renans were at work endeavoring to uniermie the historical basis of the Christian scheme, theref forts would prove nugatory when met by the practas results of that scheme in reforming character, in stituting benevolence for selfishness as the dominant motive in human commerce, in sustaining the heart trial, in comforting it in sickness, and supporting it a dissolution. With the results of Christianity befre him and in him, the Christian may confidently say to all his enemies: "If a lie can do all this, then a l'es better than all your truth, for your truth does not pretend to do it; and if our lie is better in every p sible legitimate result than your truth, then you truth is proved to be a lie, and our lie is the truth' The argument is not only fair but it is unanswer able, and saves a world of trouble. Of all "shat methods" with infidelity, this is the shortest. It a like the argument of design in proving the existent of an intelligent first cause. The man who i or denies it, is either incapable of reason or vic perverse.

So the modern preacher preaches more and less. Ile declares, promulgates, explains, advises horts, appeals. He does more than this. Inste regarding Christianity solely as a scheme of bee. faith, and thus becoming the narrow expounder of creed, he broadens into a critic and cultivator of t

man motive and character. We do not assert that modern preaching is entirely released from its old narrowness. There are still too many who heat over the old broth, and ladle it out in the old way which they learned in the seminary. This "preaching of Jesus Christ" is still to multitudes the preaching of a scheme of religion, the explanation of a plan, the promulgation of dogmata. But these men, except in the most ignorant and unprogressive communities, preach to empty walls, or contemptuous audiences. The man who preaches Christ the most effectively and acceptably, in these days, is he who tries all motive and character and life by the divine standard, who applies the divine life to the every-day life of the world, and whose grand endeavor is not so much to save men as to make them worth saving. He denounces wrong in public and private life; he exposes and reproves the sins of society; he applies and urges the motives to purity, sobriety, honesty, charity, and good neighborhood; he shows men to themselves, and then shows them the mode by which they may correct themselves. In all this he meets with wonderful acceptance, and, most frequently, in direct proportion to his faithfulness. This, after all, is the kind of talk men are willing to hear, even if it condemns them. All truth relating to the faults of character and life, if presented in a Christian spirit, by a man who assumes nothing for himself, and who never loses sight of his own weakness and his brotherhood with the erring masses whom he addresses, is received gladly.

The world has come to the comprehension of the fact that, after all that may be said of dogmatic Christianity, character is the final result at which its author aimed. The aim and end of Christianity is to make men better, and in making them better to secure their safety and happiness in this world and the world to come. The Christianity which narrows the sympathies of a man, and binds him to his sect, which makes the Christian name of smaller significance to him than the name of his party, which thinks more of soundness of belief than soundness of character, is the meanest kind of Christianity, and belongs to the old and outgrown time. It savors of schools and books and tradition. The human element in it predominates over the divine. The typical modern preacher mingles with men. He goes into the world of business-into its cares, its trials, its great temptations, its overreachings, its dangers and disasters--and learns the character and needs of the men he meets there. He sits in the humble dwelling of the laborer, and reads the wants of the humanity he finds there. In workshops, in social assemblies, in schools, among men, women, and children, wherever they live, or meet for labor or for pleasure, his presence is familiar. Human life is the book he reads preparatory to his pulpit labors, and without the faithful reading of this book he has no fitting preparation for his task. No matter how much a preacher knows of the divine life, if he has not an equal knowledge of the human, his message will be a barren one.

The great mistake of the modern preacher is in not keeping up with the secular thought of his time. It is quite as essential to the preacher to know what men are thinking about as what they are doing. Comparatively few preachers are at home in the current progress of science, and too many of them look coldly upon it, as upon something necessarily inimical to the system of religion to which they have committed their lives. They apparently forget that their indifference or opposition wins only contempt for themselves and their scheme. There are few laymen so devoid of common sense as to be unable to see that any scheme which is afraid of scientific truth-nay, any scheme which does not gladly welcome every new realm won to the grand domain of human knowledge—is unworthy of confidence. An unreasoning loyalty to old interpretations of revealed truth is a weakness of the pulpit that becomes practically a reproach to Christianity itself. If the God of nature undeniably disputes the God of revelation, as the preacher interprets him, let him give up his interpretation gladly, and receive the correction as from the mouth of God himself. It is only in this way that he can maintain his hold upon his age, and win honor to the religion he tries to serve. All truth is divine, and the mode of utterance makes it neither more so nor less. A man who denies a truth spoken to him by the God of nature is as truly and culpably an infidel as if he were to deny a plainly spoken truth of the Bible.

Prizes for Suicide.

WE have all heard of the testimony of the Boston physicians against the system of forcing pursued by the public schools of that city,-of its tendency to produce nervous diseases, and even, in some instances, insanity itself. The testimony is so strong and positive, and so unanimous, that it must be accepted as true. Some weeks ago, at the commencement anniversary of a college, not in Boston or New England, a long row of young men was called up to receive the prizes awarded to various forms of acquisition and scholarship. It was pleasant to see their shining faces, and to witness their triumph; but the pleasure was spoiled by the patent fact that their victories had been won at the expense of physical vitality. Physically, there was not a well-developed man among them; and many of them were as thin as if they had just arisen from a bed of sickness. After they had left the stage, a whole class was called on, to receive their diplomas. The improvement in the average physique was so great that there was a universal recognition of the fact by the audience; and whispered comments upon it went around the assembly. The poorer scholars were undeniably the larger and healthier men. The victors had won a medal, and lost that which is of more value than the aggregate of all the gold medals ever struck.

There is one lesson which teachers, of all men living, are the slowest to learn, viz., that scholarship is not power, and that, the ability to acquire is not the