It is to be hoped that political corruption and intrigue will not delay many years this assertion of the sovereignty of the commonwealth by taxation, which will give the republic a solid foundation, and that the power of the commonwealth thus enlarged will, through the Department of Productive Labor, and by educational progress, give us a true and a happy republic. These suggestions are not farther in advance of public opinion to-day, than was the nationalization of the land, when I urged it in 1847. They will find fit champions in a few years.

To what extent the Department of Productive Labor should be fostered by every State, and to what extent it may be authorized by the federal constitution, we need not yet consider, for it is apparent that the due administration of the national domain and development of the arid region by irrigation, will furnish ample employment, if we adopt as a sacred principle, the demand of justice, that not another acre of the national domain shall ever be sold. Let us give settlers the easiest possible terms, but never surrender to monopoly the land of the commonwealth.



"AEONIAN PUNISHMENT."

BY REV. W. E. MANLEY, D. D.

Some months ago an article with the above heading appeared in THE ARENA. It was written by Rev. C. H. Kidder, and was intended as a reply to one written by myself, on the eternal punishment.

It appears that a friend of Mr. Kidder, a physician "of great ability," on reading my article was caused great disquietude. "He felt that if all the statements contained in the article were accurate, his religious instructors had been either knaves or fools—knaves, if they taught what they did not believe, and fools, if they believed what they taught," p. 101. I have only to say that the statements of my article are, in all important respects, accurate, explain the rest as he may; nor has Mr. Kidder shown that they are not accurate, except in one particular, not affecting the main question. This will be noticed in the proper place.

It is often true that men "of great ability" are men of hasty judgment, especially when they are "much disquieted"; and the doctor is certainly mistaken in supposing that his instructors were either knaves or fools. The men who teach eternal punishment are in the main honest, and of fair intelligence. The doctrine came into the church in a dark age; and for centuries it was dangerous to believe or teach anything else. When the human mind was set free, and it was no longer dangerous to teach what one believed, the doctrine had become so firmly established by a false system of interpretation, that it was a long time before much impression could be made toward its removal. But the Gospel leaven has been working in all these ages since the reformation to the present century; so that now there is little faith of that kind in the Orthodox church and none out of it.

I have not intended to admit that all the teachers of eternal punishment in the church have been honest. Some have been dishonest, in order, as they claimed, to do the more good. There was a class of ministers in the ancient church who had two sets of opinions, one set for the congregation, and another for the private circle. Dr. Edward Beecher mentions several venerable men, who preached eternal misery, but who had not a particle of faith in the doctrine, as he believes. They are Chrysostom, Gregory Nazianzus, Athanasius, and Basil the Great. See Historical Retribution, p. 273. These were great men; but a greater than these had taught that it is right to lie for the good of mankind, namely, Plato. Who will say there have been no others since that day? For the honor of humanity, I trust not many.

I would say here that all Mr. Kidder has advanced, may be admitted, without the least detriment to the main purpose of my article. The greater part of his paper is devoted to incidental topics that are not essential to the main subject, and what he says on the main point utterly fails to invalidate my argument, as the reader will clearly perceive before I get through.

So far as our version favors eternal punishment, the fact is due chiefly to a wrong translation; and it is difficult to suppress the conviction that the translators, in much of their work of this kind, were perfectly conscious of the wrong they were doing. The word hell in every place where it is found (with one or two exceptions, where the heathen hell is referred to) is the rendering of a word that has no such meaning. The word everlasting combines a wrong rendering and a wrong exegesis. These are the main points. They are the Jachin and Boaz of the orthodox temple. But the translators have sought to favor their doctrines in other ways; sometimes by supplying words not found in the text, and sometimes by rejecting words that are there.

My article was devoted chiefly to these last, particularly a wrong use of the Greek article, and the rejection of an important word, when it conflicted with their views, though they often employ it at other times.

I say with the fullest confidence that the doctrine of eternal punishment is not in the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures. It came into the church chiefly with converts who had believed it before their conversion, and continued to believe it by a misconstruction of the Scriptures.

THE SON OF GOD.

By not paying particular attention to what I said, my critic has misrepresented me in an important particular; and has repeated the idea a number of times, namely, that I deny the sonship of Jesus Christ. I simply refer to some passages to show the importance of the Greek article, and some of these have the expression, "the Son of God," when they ought to have been rendered "a Son of God," or "a Son of a God" not only because the article is omitted in the Greek, but it is the language of Satan, and of the heathen, and therefore more characteristic than the words the Son of God. The sonship of our Lord has evidence enough, without that of Satan and the heathen, especially as the evangelists have represented them as giving no such testimony.

The reference in my article to insanity and suicide was incidental; and whether strictly correct or not, the thousand that have been ruined in this way is a picture sufficiently frightful, and shows that the Christian religion has been greatly misapprehended; for in its purity, it never has, and never can, produce a single case of either insanity or suicide.

THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY.

Of the six theological seminaries, which I referred to, on the authority of Dr. Edward Beecher, as existing in the early days of the church, I find on further reading that two were not theological seminaries, but "schools of thought," as the doctor afterwards calls them. One of these was in Asia Minor; and there, the annihilation of the wicked was believed and taught. The other was in North Africa; and here, endless punishment was the prevailing belief on the subject of future destiny. The four others were real seminaries, in which the doctrine of the final holiness and happiness of all intelligent beings, after future disciplinary punishment, was inculcated by men as much distinguished for piety and virtue and missionary zeal, as any in the whole church.

The four schools were located at Alexandria, in Egypt, Cesarea in Palestine, Antioch in Syria, and Edessa or Nisibis. This last school was held at the one or the other of these places, in Eastern Syria. When persecution drove it out of one of these cities, it held its sessions in the other. All these four schools were numerously attended, often having hundreds of scholars at one time. Mr. Kidder thinks there must have been more than this number; but as it is a mere conjecture with him, his opinion can have but little weight against the statement of a man who has thoroughly investigated the subject. It will not do to judge them after our little schools, at the present day, when the church is divided into scores of little communities, each having its insignificant seminary or seminaries. The church was then one body, though each school varied slightly from the rest.

PROFESSOR SHEDD.

Dr. Beecher points out and refutes the statements of Professor Shedd, and some others, on the prevalence of certain doctrines in the early church.

Professor Shedd, in his history of Christian doctrine, Vol. II. p. 414, says, "The punishment inflicted upon the lost was regarded by the fathers of the ancient church, with very few exceptions, as endless." "The only exception to the belief in the eternity of future punishment, in the ancient church, appears in the Alexandrian school." "The views of Origen concerning future retribution were almost wholly confined to their schools."

Dr. Beecher makes the following reply. "This statement somewhat transcends the limits set by Lecky, to the doctrine of the restoration. It is not confined to two individuals, but it is confined to one school,—the school of Alexandria. What then shall be said of Diodore, of Tarsus, not of the school of Alexandria, the eminent teacher of Chrysostom, and a decided advocate of universal restoration? What shall be said of his disciple, Theodore of Mopsuestia, that earnest defender of the same doctrine, of whom Dorner says that he was the climax and crown of the school of Antioch? What shall be said of the great Eastern school of Edessa and Nisibis, in which the scriptural exposition of Theodore of Mopsuestia, was a supreme authority and text-book? Was Theodore of the school of Alexandria? Not at all. He was of the school of Antioch.... And yet he not only taught the doctrine of universal restoration on his own basis, but even introduced it into the liturgy of the Nestorian Church, in Eastern Asia. What, too, shall we say of the two great theological schools, in which he had a place of such honor and influence?... Dr. Shedd would have called to mind a statement in Guericke's Church History, as translated by himself, "It is noticeable that the exegetico-grammatical school of Antioch, as well as the allegorizing Alexandrian, adopted and maintained the doctrine of restoration, p. 349, note 1." Then it should be added that Origen was not the only one of the Alexandrian school, who taught this doctrine. Clemens, who preceded Origen, taught it; and Didymus who succeeded him. The whole period of the presidency of these men over the school must have been a century or more. And yet the great body of Christians, as Professor Shedd would have us believe, were believers in eternal punishment; but they neither turned these men out, nor established any other school to counteract their influence. They must have been a trifle different from believers in the doctrine now. And what is very remarkable, we hear of no books or essays written against the doctrine of the Alexandrian school, as if it were a pernicious heresy.

Church historians in modern times impose on their readers by quoting passages from ancient Christian writers, that employ the word everlasting in connection with punishment, leaving the impression that these words were understood then as they are now, when in fact believers in limited punishment, as well as those who thought punishment endless, employed the term everlasting (aiōnios) to denote its duration. Origen and Clemens speak of everlasting punishment, though they believed it would end in reformation and salvation. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus warn men of everlasting punishment, though they believed in the annihilation of the wicked.

MORAL RESURRECTION.

In some instances the resurrection is used in the same way as the new birth, to denote conversion. Such is John v. 21-29. The change thus indicated is commonly called a moral resurrection. My critic would have the last two verses refer to the general resurrection at the end of the world; while he seems to admit that all the rest relates to a moral resurrection, two things as unlike as they possibly could be. Such is not our Lord's mode of teaching. I understand the whole passage as confined to one subject, the moral resurrection. He divides the subject into two parts, to be sure, but it is the same subject in both parts—first, the moral resurrection then in progress; and second, the moral resurrection "coming" on a more extensive scale, even embracing all men. Jesus changes one word only, using graves,—more properly tombs,—instead of death. But coming out of death into life, and coming out of the tombs into life, are essentially the same thing. Both are figurative expressions. I insist that where Jesus says, "The hour is coming and now is," he conveys the impression that the then present process was in its nature the same as the coming one, only that the latter would be more extended, even universal.

THE WORD A GOD.

That Trinitarians should translate this expression, The Word was God, in John i. 1, might be expected; but by the rules of translating the Greek language into English, the expression should be, The Word was a god. The rule of Middleton that the article must not be used in the predicate of a sentence may hold good, when it conflicts with no superior rule; but if taken absolutely, it has many exceptions. I suppose the renowned Origen understood the Greek language. He interprets the passage before us as I do. "Origen uses [Greek: theos] (god), not in our modern sense, as a proper name, but as a common name. This use of the term, which was common to him with his contemporaries, and continued to be common after his time, is illustrated by his remarks on the passage, 'and the Logos was God'; in which he contended, that the Logos was god, in an inferior sense;—not as we would say God, but a god, not the divine being, but a divine being. (Opp. iv. p. 48, reqq.)." See Norton's Statement of Reasons, p. 120, note.

The quotation from the Athanasian creed had better been omitted; for many will read it, who had not before known that it contained any such absurdity; and will have less respect for the Trinity than they would wish to have. The quotation is, "The Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they (?) are not three Gods, but one God." I am accused of following an "uncritical principle," in not reasoning in the same way. If it is "uncritical," I plead guilty, and beg that my sentence may be as mild as possible. But before the sentence is pronounced may it not be well to apply the reasoning to some other subject,—to Peter, James, and John, for instance? Each of these is a man; but they are not three men but one man!

MELLO.

I complained that the translators and revisors left out this word, apparently for the reason that it conflicts with their theology. It makes certain things to be near at hand, which they regarded as far in the future. My critic says, "The Greek mellō frequently has the meaning assigned to it by Dr. Manley, but it is not shut up to that meaning," p. 106. It probably has that meaning twenty times, where it has any other meaning once. In the passages from which it is excluded, if it has any other meaning, why did they not retain it, and render it according to its true import, and not throw it out? Mr. Kidder does not meet the case, when he shows that the word does sometimes have another meaning. His business is to show that it has no meaning, in the passages from which it is excluded. It will then be in order to show why the writers put such a word in these passages. When the translators recognize the word, they seldom fail to give it a meaning corresponding to the sense I assign to it.

It is conceded that the wrath to come (Matt. iii. 7; Luke iii. 7.), should probably be the wrath about to come, meaning the destruction soon to fall on the Jewish State. This word mellō (about) takes the passage out of the hands of those who would apply it to a far-off eternal punishment. The word in other passages would have been alike opposed to the common construction; and, therefore, it was left out. This is the plain common-sense view of the case; and I shall hold the translators and revisers guilty of a base fraud, till some good reason can be given for their conduct. This probably cannot be done.

AIŌN, AIŌNIOS. That the expression, "end of the world," where the original for world is aiōn, ever has the meaning of end of this material universe cannot be proved. Where Jesus promises to be with his disciples to the end of the world (aiōn) is the most favorable instance. But in the sense here intended, namely, enabling them to perform miracles, he was with them, only to the end of the Jewish age. By that time the Gospel was so well established, as no longer to need miraculous interposition. In what sense Jesus was with the disciples, is explained by the closing words of Mark's Gospel. "And they went forth, preaching everywhere, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word, by the signs that followed. Amen."

My critic says of aiōn, p. 107: "It may at times refer to the Jewish dispensation, with its limit fixed at the judgment executed upon the holy city, and the destruction of the temple." Then it may mean this, in Matt. xiii. 38, 39, 49, and xxiv. 3. "It does not always mean age; for this meaning is inadequate for the worlds, aiōnos, of Heb. i. 2, xi. 3." It does not seem so; for God created the ages and dispensations of time, as much as he did the material worlds. Constituted may be better than created. God is the author of both creations. Aion is a term that always implies time, or duration, and not material substance. De Quincey says that everything has its aion. The aiōn of an individual man is about seventy years. The aion of the human race would probably be some millions of years. It would follow from this reasoning that the aiōn of God would be eternal, past, and to come. De Quincey does not, I believe, carry his reasoning to this result; and I had never seen the argument stated before, as it is in the passages produced by Mr. K., from Aristotle and Plato. But the same reasoning that makes the aiōn of God eternal, makes every other limited. It would be illogical, and appear so at once, if one should argue, God is eternal; and, therefore, punishment is eternal.

The rule generally accepted for understanding aiōnios, is to modify the meaning according to the nature of the noun which it qualifies. If it denote duration, the amount of duration will depend on the noun qualified. This rule forbids that eternal punishment should be of as long duration as eternal life. Punishment is a means to an end, and in itself is undesirable. Life or happiness is an end; the longer continued the better; for it is desirable in itself. It is that which we seek by means of punishment. The less we have of punishment, the better. The more we have of life, the better.

My critic ought to have pondered the words of Dr. Taylor Lewis, before he entered on this discussion. His words are, "The preacher, in contending with the Universalist and the Restorationist, would commit an error, and it may be, suffer a failure in his argument, should he lay the whole stress of it on the etymological or historical significance of the words, aiōn, aiōnios, and attempt to prove that of themselves they necessarily carry the meaning of endless duration." Lange's Eccl. p. 48. Beecher's "Retribution," p. 154. Prof. Lewis says that aiōnios means pertaining to the age or world to come. The only fault this definition has, is the addition of the words to come. Jesus says, "These shall go away into the punishment of the age, and the righteous into the life of the age." The age referred to, is the Christian age or dispensation, that has already come. It is the same as has all along been called, "the age to come," or about to come. It was to follow the Jewish age, which was soon to end. Both together are referred to as "this age and that which is about to come." But when the parable of the sheep and goats begins, the age is already come.

The form here given by Taylor Lewis is the same as Jesus himself used, if he spoke the Aramaic, as my critic says he did, and I agree with him. He did not say, "These shall go away into aiōnion punishment," etc., which is the unwarranted Greek form. But his words are, "These shall go away into the punishment of the age (or pertaining to the age), and the righteous into the life of the age (or pertaining to the age)." It is the same form in the Peshito-Syriac version, made in the days of the Apostles. It is the same in the Hebrew New Testament, translated by the Bible society, to circulate among the modern Jews.

I have in my possession over a hundred passages, from classic Greek authors, in which aiōn is used in a limited sense, generally denoting human life, or the age of man. It is used, in a few instances, to denote an endless age, by attaching to it another word for endless. The adjective aiōnios is used very little by these authors, and not at all, I think, by the more ancient ones. No lexicon gives it the definition of eternal, till long after the time of Christ; and the remark is added, when thus defined, that it is so understood by the theologians.

But the principal help for understanding the Greek of the New Testament, is the Greek version of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. The words we are discussing are found in that version not far from four hundred times, three fourths of them probably in a limited sense. The Hebrew form, "the statutes of the age," are rendered into Greek, everlasting or aiōnion statutes; "the covenant of the age," the aiōnion covenant, etc. These terms have sixteen different renderings. They are, everlasting, forever, forevermore, perpetual, ever, never (when joined with a negative particle), old, ancient, long, always, world, lasting, eternal, continuance, at any time, Elam. The last word stands for the Hebrew olam, the word answering to aiōn in the Greek. With these definitions in view (a number of them being limited terms), it would be folly to claim that this word has an unlimited meaning when applied to punishment. The punishment which God inflicts is limited. Heb. 12.

Great stress is placed on the circumstance, that in Matt. xxv. 46, the punishment and the life are spoken of near together, even in the same verse. Tertullian, and later Augustine, urged this fact as proof that both must be of the same duration. The late Albert Barns thought the argument sound. Of course, no large man ever rode a large horse, without being of the same size. Perhaps an illustration from Scripture will be more satisfactory. "And the eternal mountains were scattered; the everlasting hills did bow; his ways are everlasting." Hab. iii. 6. For the last sentence, see the margin, Revised Edition. Are there to be no ways of God, after the mountains and hills are gone? Besides, this whole parable has its fulfilment, not in eternity, but in the Christian dispensation. It began to be fulfilled at the coming of Christ, when some were living, who had heard him, during his ministry, nearly forty years before. Matt. xvi. 27, 28. No fixed rewards and punishments are possible under the circumstances, for men are changing. The rendering "pertaining to the age," has no objection of this kind. If it be claimed that a man, "once a Christian, always a Christian," no one can doubt, that a man, not a Christian, may become one, and so change his condition—a proof that his condition is not eternal.

I will close this article by a few words on the apocalypse. The dramatic representation of Eichhorn is correct, save the added clause, "the eternal felicity of the future life described." The holy city is not heaven; it came down from God out of heaven. It does not denote a final and fixed condition. It is four-square, and has three gates on each side; and all of them open continually, to admit those who wish to enter; and the invitation is sounded without ceasing, to the outsiders from within, to "come and partake of the waters of life freely." Neither in the New Jerusalem, nor the lake of fire, is there any allusion to the eternal world of fixed and changeless conditions.

In those days, when books were not printed, but transcribed by the hand, it was customary for the author to make a strong appeal to the copyist or transcriber, not to make any alteration in the book, with certain penalties, fictitious or otherwise. Hence the Revelation closes with this admonition,—not to add to, nor take from, the book (xxii. 18, 19.), the penalty being sufficiently severe, to which I would commend the late revisers of the New Testament.



THE NEGRO QUESTION FROM THE NEGRO'S POINT OF VIEW.

BY PROF. W. S. SCARBOROUGH.

In the discussion of the so-called "Negro Problem," there is, as a rule, a great deal of the sentimental and still more of the sensational. By a series of non sequitur arguments the average disputant succeeds admirably in proving what is foreign to the subject. This is true of writers of both sections of our country—North as well as South—but especially true of those of the South.

The recent symposium of Southern writers in the Independent on the Negro Question, as interesting as it was for novelty and variety of view, is no exception to the rule. If the negro could be induced to believe for a moment that he was thus actually destitute of all the elements that go to make up a rational creature, his life would be miserable beyond endurance. But he has not reached that point nor does he care to reach it. Others may exclaim:—

"O wad some power the giftie gi'e us To see oursel's as ithers see us;"

but not the negro, if the vision must always be so distorted. The black man is naturally of a sanguine temperament, as has so often been said; and the facts in the case bear him out in entertaining a hopeful view of his own future and his ability to carve it out. I am sure that they do not warrant even our Southern friends in taking such a pessimistic view of the situation, so far as the negro himself is concerned. But facts are of little account nowadays. There is a tendency to ignore them and appeal to the prejudices and passions of men, and that, too, when it is well known that such methods of procedure prolong rather than settle the question at issue. This is the work of the alarmist—to keep things stirred up and always in an unsettled state.

I think it may be justly inferred that the average white man does not understand the black man, and that he is still an unknown quantity to many of the white people of the country, even to those who profess to know him best. Admitting this, then, it is but natural that much of their deliberation and many of their conclusions should be wide of the mark. The negro does not censure the white man for his conclusions as they are the logical consequence of his premises, but he does object to his premises. Our white friends make their mistake in seeming by all their movements to insist that there is but one standpoint from which to view this question, the white man's; but there is another and the negro is viewing it from that side, not selfishly but in a friendly and brotherly spirit.

Senator George was right when he said that the solution of this question should be left to time, but wrong when he further added, "and to the sound judgment of the Southern people." The recent disfranchisement of the negroes of his native State shows very plainly to the thoughtful citizen that the South is not yet capable of justly handling this question, notwithstanding that they are the people "who have the trouble before them every day." This is Mississippi's fatal mistake and one that places the State in the rear of her Southern sisters, and for the present, at least, lessens the value of any suggestion from that quarter.

It is well understood that the sentiment of the American people is that enough has been done for the negro; that the country is under no obligations to look further after his interest, and that he must act for himself. Survival of the fittest is now the watchword. There is no objection to this provided the blacks are allowed to do for themselves,—to survive as the fittest, if it be possible,—but this they are not allowed to do. They are certainly anxious to work out their own destiny. They are tired of sentiment and are therefore impatient. They desire to show to the world that they are not only misunderstood but misjudged. They are willing to unite with either North or South in the adjustment of present difficulties.

Unlike the Indians they are sincere—neither treacherous nor deceitful. They are simple, frank, and open-hearted, and are as desirous of good government as are the most honored citizens of the land. Let alone, they will give neither the State nor the nation any trouble. They feel themselves a part and parcel of the nation and as such have an interest in its prosperity as deep as those who are allowed to exercise, untrammelled, the rights of citizenship.

To keep the blacks submissive there is need of neither army nor navy. Though at the foot of the ladder they are contented to remain there, until by virtue of their own efforts they may rise to higher planes. The negro has never sought, does not now, nor will he seek to step beyond his limit. "Social equality," "Negro domination," and "Negro supremacy," are meaningless terms to him so far as his own aspirations are concerned. The social side of this question will regulate itself. It has always done so, in all ages and all climes, despite coercion, despite law. This is the least of the negro's cares. His demand for civil rights is no demand for "social equality." This is a mistaken view of the subject. It is this dread of social equality, this fear of social contact with the negro that precludes many well-meaning people from securing accurate information in regard to the aims, and purposes, and capabilities of those whom they desire to help. But there is light ahead, dark as at times it now may seem, and erroneous as are the views in regard to the negro's relation to the American body-politic.

Congressman Herbert, in his effort to show the negro's incapacity for self-government by calling attention to the defalcations, embezzlements, and petty larcenies, etc., of reconstruction times, forgets that if this is to be taken as the gauge of capacity for self-government, the same rule will apply to bank and railroad wreckers of the present day,—to every defaulter and embezzler of State and private funds, and to every absconding clerk. Now we must remember that this class of citizens is enormously large, and that they are all white, as a rule. Every daily paper that one picks up devotes considerable space to this class of citizens who, according to Mr. Herbert, has shown its "incapacity for self-government," as well as the incapacity of others "who alone have acquired such a capacity" as is claimed by Congressman Barnes. Queer logic is it not? The latter should say so, for it is he who claims that "the Anglo-Saxon is the only member of the human family who has yet shown evidence of a capacity for self-government."

Again, it is said that the negro cannot attain high and rigid scholarship, and even those who have succeeded in becoming educated "if left to themselves would relapse into barbarism." Now, I cannot believe that any such statement as this can be made with sincerity. In the light of the facts it is preposterous. Flipper, while at West Point, demonstrated beyond controversy the fallacy of such a position as the first; and there is hardly a college commencement in which some negro in some way does not continue to show its falsity by distinguishing himself by his extraordinary attainments. Even while I write, a letter lies before me from a young colored student, a graduate of Brown University, who is now taking a post-graduate course at the American School for Classical Studies, at Athens, Greece. From all reports, he is making an excellent record, and will present a thesis in March on "The Demes of Athens." As to relapsing into barbarism, were the negro removed from white influence, the mere mention of the negro scholar, Dr. Edward Blyden, born on the island of St. Thomas, educated and reared in Africa away from the slightest social contact with people of Anglo-Saxon extraction, is sufficient proof that such a conclusion is not a correct one.

What a leading journal has said in regard to the Indians may be repeated here as applicable to the negro: "The most crying need in Indian [negro] affairs is its disentanglement from politics and political manipulations."

Here is an opportunity for the Church, but the Church has shown itself wholly inadequate to meet the case, and because of its tendency to shirk its duty, may be said to be to blame for many of the troubles growing out of the presence of the negro on this continent. I have noted that there is more prejudice in the Church, as a rule, than there is in the State. If, as is asserted by some, neither Church nor State can settle this question, then there is nothing to be done but to leave it to time and the combined patience and forbearance of the American people,—black as well as white.



A PRAIRIE HEROINE.

BY HAMLIN GARLAND.

Lucretia Burns had never been handsome, even in her days of early girlhood, and now she was middle aged, distorted with work and child-bearing, and looking faded and worn as one of the boulders that lay beside the pasture fence near where she sat milking a large white cow.

She had no shawl or hat and no shoes, for it was still muddy in the little yard, where the cattle stood patiently fighting the flies and mosquitoes swarming into their skins already wet with blood. The evening was oppressive with its heat, and a ring of just-seen thunder-heads gave premonitions of an approaching storm.

An observer seeing Lucretia Burns as she rose from the cow's side, and taking her pails of foaming milk staggered toward the gate, would have been made weak with sympathetic pain. The two pails hung from her lean arms, her bare feet slipped on the filthy ground, her greasy and faded calico dress showed her tired, swollen ankles, and the mosquitoes swarmed mercilessly on her neck and bedded themselves in her colorless hair.

The children were quarrelling at the well and the sound of blows could be heard. Calves were querulously calling for their milk, and little turkeys lost in the tangle of grass were piping plaintively.

The sun just setting struck through a long, low rift like a boy peeping beneath the eaves of a huge roof. Its light brought out Lucretia's face as she leaned her sallow forehead on the top bar of the gate and looked towards the west.

It was a pitifully worn, almost tragic face,—long, thin, sallow, hollow-eyed. The mouth had long since lost the power to shape itself into a kiss, and had a droop at the corners which seemed to announce a breaking down at any moment into a despairing wail. The collarless neck and sharp shoulders showed painfully.

She felt vaguely that the night was beautiful, the setting sun, the noise of frogs, the nocturnal insects beginning to pipe—all in some way called her girlhood back to her, though there was little in her girlhood to give her pleasure. Her large gray eyes (her only interesting feature) grew round, deep, and wistful as she saw the illimitable craggy clouds grow crimson, roll slowly up, and fire at the top. A childish scream recalled her.

"Oh my soul!" she half groaned, half swore, as she lifted her milk and hurried to the well. Arriving there, she cuffed the children right and left with all her remaining strength, saying in justification:—

"My soul! can't you—you young 'uns give me a minute's peace? Land knows, I'm almost gone up—washin' an' milkin' six cows, and tendin' you and cookin' f'r him, ought'o be enough f'r one day! Sadie, you let him drink now'r I'll slap your head off, you hateful thing! Why can't you behave, when you know I'm jest about dead." She was weeping now, with nervous weakness. "Where's y'r pa?" she asked after a moment, wiping her eyes with her apron.

One of the group, the one cuffed last, sniffled out, in rage and grief:—

"He's in the cornfield,—where'd ye s'pose he was?"

"Good land! why don't the man work all night? Sile, you put that dipper in that milk agin, an' I'll whack you till your head'll swim! Sadie, le' go Pet, an' go 'n get them turkeys out of the grass 'fore it gits dark! Bob, you go tell y'r dad if he wants the rest o' them cows milked, he's got 'o do it himself. I jest can't, and what's more I won't," she ended rebelliously.

Having strained the milk and fed the children, she took some skimmed milk from the cans and started to feed the calves bawling strenuously behind the barn. The eager and unruly brutes pushed and struggled to get into the pails all at once, and in consequence spilt nearly all of the milk on the ground. This was the last trial,—the woman fell down on the damp grass and moaned and sobbed like a crazed thing. The children stood around like little partridges, looking at her in silence, till at last the little one began to wail. Then the mother rose wearily to her feet, and walked slowly back towards the house.

She heard Burns threshing his team at the well, with the sound of oaths. He was tired, hungry, and ill-tempered, but she was too desperate to care. His poor, overworked team did not move quick enough for him, and his extra long turn in the corn had made him dangerous. His eyes gleamed from his dust-laid face.

"Supper ready?" he growled.

"Yes, two hours ago."

"Well, I can't help it! That devilish corn is getting too tall to plow again, and I've got 'o go through it to-morrow or not at all. Cows milked?"

"Part of 'em."

"How many?"

"Three."

"Hell! Which three?"

"Spot, and Brin, and Cherry."

"Of course! kept the three worst ones. I'll be damned if I milk 'm to-night. I don't see why you play out jest the nights I need ye most—" here he kicked a child out of the way. "Git out 'o that! Haint ye got no sense? I'll learn ye—"

"Stop that, Sim Burns!" cried the woman, snatching up the child. "You're a reg'lar ol' hyeny,—that's what you are—" she added defiantly, roused at last from her lethargy.

"You're a—beauty, that's what you are," he said, pitilessly. "Keep your brats out f'um under my feet;" and he strode off to the barn after his team, leaving her with a fierce hate in her heart. She heard him yelling at his team in their stalls.

The children had had their supper so she took them to bed. She was unusually tender to them for she wanted to make up in some way for her harshness. The ferocity of her husband had shown up her own petulant temper hideously, and she sat and sobbed in the darkness a long time beside the cradle where the little Pet slept.

She heard Burns come growling in and tramp about,—the supper was on the table, he could wait on himself. There was an awful feeling at her heart as she sat there and the house grew quiet. She thought of suicide in a vague way; of somehow taking her children in her arms and sinking into a lake somewhere, where she would never more be troubled, where she could sleep forever, without toil or hunger.

Then she thought of the little turkeys wandering in the grass, of the children sleeping at last, of the quiet, wonderful stars. Then she thought of the cows left unmilked, and listened to them stirring uneasily in the yard. She rose, at last, and stole forth. She could not rid herself of the thought that they would suffer. She knew what the dull ache in the full breasts of a mother was, and she could not let them stand at the bars all night moaning for relief.

The mosquitoes had gone, but the frogs and katy-dids still sang, while over in the west Venus shone. She was a long time milking the cows; her hands were so tired she had often to stop and rest them, while the tears fell unheeded into the pail. She saw and felt little of the external as she sat there. She thought of how sweet it seemed the first time Sim came to see her, of the many rides to town with him when he was an accepted lover, of the few things he had given her, a coral breastpin and a ring.

She felt no shame at her present miserable appearance, she was past that; she hardly felt as if the tall, strong girl, attractive with health and hope, could be the same soul as the woman who now sat in utter despair listening to the heavy breathing of the happy cows, grateful for the relief from their burden of milk.

She contrasted her lot with that of two or three women that she knew, not a very high standard, who "kept hired help," and who had "fine houses of four or five rooms." Even the neighbors were better off than she, for they didn't have such quarrels. But she wasn't to blame—Sim didn't—then her mind changed to a vague resentment against "things;" everything seemed against her.

She rose at last and carried her second load of milk to the well, strained it, washed out the pails, and after bathing her tired feet in a tub that stood there, she put on a pair of horrible shoes without stockings, and crept stealthily into the house. Sim did not hear her as she slipped up the stairs to the little low, unfinished chamber beside her oldest children,—she could not bear to sleep near him that night,—she wanted a chance to sob herself to quiet.

As for Sim, he was a little disturbed but would as soon have cut off his head as acknowledge himself in the wrong, but he yelled as he went to bed, and found her still away:—

"Say, ol' woman, aint ye comin' to bed?" and upon receiving no answer he rolled his aching body into the creaking bed. "Do as ye damn please about it. If ye wan' to sulk y' can." And in such wise the family grew quiet in sleep, while the moist, warm air pulsed with the ceaseless chime of the crickets.

II.

When Sim Burns woke the next morning he felt a sharper twinge of remorse. It was not a broad or well-defined feeling, just a sense that he'd been unduly irritable, not that on the whole he was not in the right. Little Pet lay with the warm June sunshine filling his baby eyes, curiously content in striking at flies that buzzed around his little mouth.

The man thrust his dirty naked feet into his huge boots, and, without washing his face or combing his hair, went out to the barn to do his chores.

He was a type of the prairie farmer and his whole surrounding was typical. He had a quarter-section of fine level land, mortgaged, of course, but his house was a little box-like structure, costing, perhaps, five hundred dollars. It had three rooms and the ever-present "summer kitchen" attached to the back. It was unpainted and had no touch of beauty, a mere box.

His stable was built of slabs and banked and covered with straw. It looked like a den, was low and long, and had but one door in the end. The cow-yard held ten or fifteen cattle of various kinds, while a few calves were bawling from a pen near by. Behind the barn on the west and north was a fringe of willows forming a "wind-break." A few broken and discouraged fruit trees standing here and there among the weeds formed the garden. In short, he was spoken of by his neighbors as "a hard-working cuss, and tollably well fixed."

No grace had come or ever could come into his life. Back of him were generations of men like himself, whose main' business had been to work hard, live miserably, and beget children to take their places after they died. He was a product.

His courtship had been delayed so long on account of poverty that it brought little of humanizing emotion into his life. He never mentioned it now, or if he did, it was only to sneer obscenely at it. He had long since ceased to kiss his wife or even speak kindly to her. There was no longer any sanctity to life or love. He chewed tobacco and toiled on from year to year without any very clearly defined idea of the future.

He was tall, dark, and strong, in a flat-chested, slouching sort of way, and had grown neglectful of even decency in his dress. He wore the American farmer's customary outfit of rough brown pants, hickory shirt, and greasy white hat. It differed from his neighbors, mainly in being a little dirtier and more ragged. His grimy hands were broad and strong as the clutch of a bear, and he "was a turrible feller to turn off work," as Council said. "I druther have Sim Burns work for me one day than some men three. He's a linger." He worked with unusual speed this morning, and ended by milking all the cows himself as a sort of savage penance for his misdeeds the previous evening, muttering in self-defence:—

"Seems 's if ever' cussid thing piles on to me at once. That corn, the road-tax, and hayin' comin' on, and now she gits her back up—"

When he went back to the well he sloshed himself thoroughly in the horse-trough and went to the house. He found breakfast ready but his wife was not in sight. The older children were clamoring around the uninviting breakfast table, spread with cheap plates and with boiled potatoes and fried salt pork as the principal dish.

"Where's y'r ma?" he asked, with a threatening note in his voice, as he sat down by the table.

"She's in the bedroom."

He rose and pushed open the door. The mother sat with the babe in her lap, looking out of the window down across the superb field of timothy, moving like a lake. She did not look round. She only grew rigid. Her thin neck throbbed with the pulsing of blood to her head.

"What's got into you, now?" he said brutally; "don't be a fool. Come out and eat breakfast with me, an' take care o' y'r young ones."

She neither moved nor made a sound. With an oath he turned on his heel and went out to the table. Eating his breakfast in his usual wolfish fashion, he went out into the hot sun with his team and ridding plow, not a little disturbed by this new phase of his wife's "cantankerousness." He plowed steadily and sullenly all the forenoon, in the terrific heat and dust. The air was full of tempestuous threats, still and sultry, one of those days when work is a punishment. When he came in at noon he found things the same,—dinner on the table, but his wife out in the garden with the youngest child.

"I c'n stand it as long as she can," he said to himself, in the hearing of the children. When he finished the field of corn it was after sundown, and he came up to the house, hot, dusty, his shirt wringing wet with sweat, and his neck aching with the work of looking down all day at the cornrows. His mood was still stern. The multitudinous lift, and stir, and sheen of the wide green field had been lost upon him.

"I wonder if she's milked them cows," he muttered to himself. He gave a sigh of relief to find she had. But she had done so not for his sake, but for the sake of the poor, patient, dumb brutes.

When he went to the bedroom after supper, he found that the cradle and his wife's few little boxes and parcels—poor pathetic properties—had been removed to the garret which they called a chamber, and he knew he was to sleep alone again.

"She'll git over it, I guess." He was very tired but he didn't feel quite comfortable enough to sleep. The air was oppressive. His shirt wet in places, and stiff with dust in other places, oppressed him more than usual, so he rose and removed it, getting a clean one out of a drawer. This was an unusual thing for him, for he usually slept in the same shirt which he wore in his day's work, but it was Saturday night, and he felt justified in the extravagance.

In the meanwhile poor Lucretia was brooding over her life in a most dangerous fashion. All she had done and suffered for Simeon Burns came back to her till she wondered how she had endured it all. All day long in the midst of the glorious summer landscape she brooded.

"I hate him," she thought with a fierce blazing up through the murk of her musing, "I hate t' live. But they aint no hope. I'm tied down. I can't leave the children, and I aint got no money. I couldn't make a living out in the world. I aint never seen anything an' don't know anything."

She was too simple and too unknowing to speculate on the loss of her beauty, which would have brought her competency once,—if sold in the right market. As she lay in her little attic bed, she was still sullenly thinking, wearily thinking of her life. She thought of a poor old horse which Sim had bought once, years before, and put to the plough when it was too old and weak to work. She could see her again as in a vision, that poor old mare, with sad head drooping, toiling, toiling, till at last she could no longer move, and lying down under the harness in the furrow, groaned under the whip—and died.

Then she wondered if her own numbness and despair meant death, and she held her breath to think harder upon it. She concluded at last, grimly, that she didn't care—only for the children.

The air was frightfully close in the little attic, and she heard the low mutter of the rising storm in the west. She forgot her troubles a little, listening to the far-off gigantic footsteps of the tempest.

Boom, boom, boom, it broke nearer and nearer as if a vast cordon of cannon was being drawn around the horizon. Yet she was conscious only of pleasure. She had no fear. At last came the sweep of cool, fragrant storm-wind, a short and sudden dash of rain, and then in the cool, sweet hush which followed, the worn and weary woman fell into a deep sleep.

When she woke the younger children were playing about on the floor in their night-clothes, and little Pet was sitting in a square of sunshine intent on one of his shoes. He was too young to know how poor and squalid his surroundings were, the patch of sunshine flung on the floor glorified it all. He (little animal) was happy.

The poor of the western prairies lie almost as unhealthily close together as do the poor of the city tenements. In the small hut of the peasant there is as little chance to escape close and tainting contact as in the coops and dens of the North End of proud Boston. In the midst of oceans of land, floods of sunshine and gulfs of verdure, the farmer lives in two or three small rooms. Poverty's eternal cordon is ever round the poor.

"Ma, why didn't you sleep with pap last night?" asked Bob, the seven-year old, when he saw she was awake at last. She flushed a dull red.

"Sh! Because—I—it was too warm—and there was a storm comin'. You never mind askin' such questions. Is he gone out?"

"Yup. I heerd him callin' the pigs. It's Sunday, aint it, ma?"

"Why, yes, so it is! Wal! Now Sadie, you jump up an' dress quick's y' can, an' Bob an' Sile, you run down an' bring s'm water," she commanded, in nervous haste beginning to dress. In the middle of the room there was scarce space to stand beneath the rafters.

When Sim came in for his breakfast he found it on the table but his wife was absent.

"Where's y'r ma?" he asked with a little less of the growl in his voice.

"She's upstairs with Pet."

The man ate his breakfast in dead silence, till at last Bob ventured to say,

"What makes ma ac' so?"

"Shut up!" was the brutal reply. The children began to take sides with the mother—all but the oldest girl who was ten years old. To her the father turned now for certain things to be done, treating her in his rough fashion as a housekeeper, and the girl felt flattered and docile accordingly.

They were pitiably clad; like most farm-children, indeed, they could hardly be said to be clad at all. Sadie had on but two garments, a sort of undershirt of cotton and a faded calico dress, out of which her bare, yellow little legs protruded, lamentably dirty and covered with scratches.

The boys also had two garments, a hickory shirt and a pair of pants like their father's, made out of brown denims by the mother's never-resting hands,—hands that in sleep still sewed, and skimmed, and baked, and churned. The boys had gone to bed without washing their feet, which now looked like toads, calloused, brown, and chapped.

Part of this the mother saw with her dull eyes as she came down, after seeing the departure of Sim up the road with the cows. It was a beautiful Sunday morning, and the woman might have sung like a bird if men were only as kind to her as Nature. But she looked dully on the seas of ripe grasses, tangled and flashing with dew, out of which the bobolinks and larks sprang. The glorious winds brought her no melody, no perfume, no respite from toil and care.

She thought of the children she saw in the town. Children of the merchant and banker, clean as little dolls, the boys in knickerbocker suits, the girls in dainty white dresses, and a bitterness sprang into her heart. She soon put the dishes away, but felt too tired and listless to do more.

"Taw-bay-wies! Pet want ta-aw-bay-wies!" cried the little one, tugging at her dress.

Listlessly, mechanically she took him in her arms, and went out into the garden which was fragrant and sweet with dew and sun. After picking some berries for him, she sat down on the grass under the row of cotton-woods, and sank into a kind of lethargy. A kingbird chattered and shrieked overhead, the grasshoppers buzzed in the grasses, strange insects with ventriloquistic voices sang all about her,—she could not tell where.

"Ma, can't I put on my clean dress?" insisted Sadie.

"I don't care," said the brooding woman darkly. "Leave me alone."

Oh, if she could only lie here forever, escaping all pain and weariness! The wind sang in her ears, the great clouds, beautiful as heavenly ships, floated far above in the vast dazzling deeps of blue sky, the birds rustled and chirped around her, leaping-insects buzzed and clattered in the grass and in the vines and bushes. The goodness and glory of God was in the very air, the bitterness and oppression of man in every line of her face.

But her quiet was broken by Sadie who came leaping like a fawn down through the grass.

"O ma, Aunt Maria and Uncle William are coming. They've jest turned in."

"I don't care if they be!" she answered in the same dully-irritated way. "What're they comin' here to-day for, I wan' to know." She stayed there immovably, till Mrs. Council came down to see her, piloted by two or three of the children. Mrs. Council, a jolly, large-framed woman, smiled brightly, and greeted her in a loud, jovial voice. She made the mistake of taking the whole matter lightly; her tone amounted to ridicule.

"Sim says you've been having a tantrum, Creeshy. Don't know what for, he says."

"He don't," said the wife with a sullen flash in the eyes. "He don't know why! Well, then, you just tell him what I say. I've lived in hell long enough. I'm done. I've slaved here day in and day out f'r twelve years without pay—not even a decent word. I've worked like no nigger ever worked 'r could work and live. I've given him all I had, 'r ever expect to have. I'm wore out. My strength is gone, my patience is gone. I'm done with it—that's a part of what's the matter."

"My sakes, Lucreeshy! You mustn't talk that way."

"But I will," said the woman, as she supported herself on one palm and raised the other. "I've got to talk that way." She was ripe for an explosion like this. She seized upon it with eagerness. "They aint no use o' livin' this way, anyway. I'd take poison if it want f'r the young ones."

"Lucreeshy Burns!"

"Oh, I mean it."

"Land sakes alive, I b'leeve you're goin' crazy!"

"I shouldn't wonder if I was. I've had enough t' drive an Indian crazy. Now you jest go off an' leave me 'lone. I aint in mind to visit—they aint no way out of it, an' I'm tired o' tryin' to find a way. Go off an' let me be."

Her tone was so bitterly hopeless that the great jolly face of Mrs. Council stiffened into a look of horror such as she had not worn for years. The children, in two separate groups, could be heard rioting. Bees were humming around the clover in the grass, and the kingbird chattered ceaselessly from the Lombardy poplar-tip. Both women felt all this peace and beauty of the morning, dimly, and it disturbed Mrs. Council because the other was so impassive under it all. At last, after a long and thoughtful pause, Mrs. Council asked a question whose answer she knew would decide it all,—asked it very kindly and softly,—

"Creeshy, are you comin' in?"

"No," was the short and sullenly decisive answer. Mrs. Council knew that was the end, and so rose with a sigh and went away.

"Wal, good by," she said simply.

Looking back she saw Lucretia lying at length with closed eyes and hollow cheeks. She seemed to be sleeping, half-buried in the grass. She did not look up nor reply to her sister-in-law. Her life also was one of toil and trouble, but not so hard and hapless as Lucretia's. By contrast with most of her neighbors she seemed comfortable.

"Sim Burns, what you ben doin' to that woman?" she burst out as she waddled up to where the two men were sitting under a cotton-wood tree, talking and whittling after the manner of farmers.

"Nawthin' 's fur 's I know," answered Burns, not quite honestly, and looking uneasy.

"You needn't try t' git out of it like that, Sim Burns," replied his sister. "That woman never got into that fit f'r nawthin'."

"Wal, if you know more about it than I do, whadgy ask me fur," he replied angrily.

"Tut, tut!" put in Council, always a peacemaker, "hold y'r horses! Don't git on y'r ear, childern! Keep cool, and don't spile y'r shirts. Most likely yer all t' blame. Keep cool an' swear less."

"Wal, I'll bet Sim's more to blame than she is. Why they aint a harder-workin' woman in the hull State of Ioway than she is—"

"Except Marm Council."

"Except nobody. Look at her, jest skin and bones."

Council chuckled in his vast way. "That's so, mother, measured in that way she leads over you. You git fat on it."

She smiled a little, her indignation oozing away; she never "could stay mad," her children were accustomed to tell her. Burns refused to talk any more about the matter, and the visitors gave it up, and got out their team and started for home, Mrs. Council firing this parting shot:—

"The best thing you can do to-day is t' let her alone. Mebbe the childern 'll bring her round again. If she does come round, you see 't you treat her a little more 's y' did when you was a-courtin' her."

"This way," roared Council, putting his arm around his wife's waist. She boxed his ears while he guffawed and clucked at his team.

Burns took a measure of salt and went out into the pasture to salt the cows. On the sunlit slope of the field, where the cattle came running and bawling to meet him, he threw down the salt in handfuls, and then lay down to watch them as they eagerly licked it up, even gnawing a bare spot in the sod in their eagerness to get it all.

Burns was not a drinking man; was hard-working, frugal, in fact, he had no extravagances except his tobacco. His clothes he wore until they all but dropped from him; and he worked in rain and mud, as well as dust and sun. It was this suffering and toiling all to no purpose that made him sour and irritable. He didn't see why he should have so little after so much hard work.

He was puzzled to account for it all. His mind (the average mind) was weary with trying to solve an insoluble problem. His neighbors, who had got along a little better than himself, were free with advice and suggestion as to the cause of his persistent poverty.

Old man Bacon, the hardest-working man in the county, laid it to Burns' lack of management. Jim Butler, who owned a dozen farms (which he had taken on mortgages), and who had got rich by buying land at government price and holding for a rise, laid all such cases as Burns to "lack of enterprise, foresight."

But the larger number feeling themselves "in the same boat" with Burns, said:—

"I'd know. Seems as if things got worse an' worse. Corn an' wheat gittin' cheaper 'n' cheaper. Machinery eatin' up profits—got to have machinery to harvest the cheap grain, an' then the machinery eats up profits. Taxes goin' up. Devil to pay all round; I'd know what 'n thunder is the matter."

The democrats said protection was killing the farmers, the republicans said no. The grangers growled about the middle-men, the green-backers said there wasn't circulating medium enough, and in the midst of it all, hard-working discouraged farmers, like Simeon Burns, worked on, unable to find out what really was the matter.

And there on this beautiful Sabbath morning, Sim sat and thought and thought, till he rose with an oath, and gave it up.

III.

It was hot and brilliant again the next morning as Douglass Radbourn drove up the road with Lily Graham, the teacher of the school in the little white schoolhouse. It was blazing hot, even though not yet nine o'clock, and the young farmers plowing beside the fence looked longingly and somewhat bitterly at Radbourn seated in a fine top-buggy beside a beautiful creature in lace and cambric.

Very beautiful the town-bred "schoolma'am" looked to those grimy, sweaty fellows, superb fellows physically, too, with bare red arms and leather-colored faces. She was as if builded of the pink and white clouds soaring far up there in the morning sky. So cool, and sweet, and dainty.

As she came in sight, their dusty and sweaty shirts grew biting as the poisoned shirt of the Norse myth, their bare feet in the brown dirt grew distressingly flat and hoof-like, and their huge, dirty, brown, chapped, and swollen hands grew so repulsive that the mere remote possibility of some time in the far future "standing a chance" of having an introduction to her, caused them to wipe them on their trousers' leg stealthily.

Lycurgus Banks, "Ly" Banks, swore when he saw Radbourn. "That cuss thinks he's ol' hell this morning. He don't earn his living. But he's jest the kind of cuss to get holt of all the purty girls."

Others gazed with simple, sad wistfulness upon the slender figure, pale, sweet face, and dark eyes of the young girl, feeling that to have talk with such a fairy-like creature was a happiness too great to ever be their lot. And when she had passed they went back to work with a sigh and feeling of loss.

As for Lily, she felt a pang of pity for these people. She looked at this peculiar form of poverty and hardship much as the fragile, tender girl of the city looks upon the men laying a gas-main in the streets. She felt (sympathetically) the heat and grime, and though but the faintest idea of what it meant to wear such clothing came to her, she shuddered. Her eyes had been opened to these things by Radbourn, who was a well-known radical,—a law student in Rock River.

"Poor fellows!" sighed Lily, almost unconsciously. "I hate to see them working there in the dirt and hot sun. It seems a hopeless sort of life, doesn't it?"

"Oh, but this is the most beautiful part of the year," said Radbourn. "Think of them in the mud, in the sleet; think of them husking corn in the snow, a bitter wind blowing; think of them a month later in the harvest; think of them imprisoned here in winter!"

"Yes, it's dreadful! But I never felt it so keenly before. You have opened my eyes to it."

"Writers and orators have lied so long about 'the idyllic' in farm life, and said so much about the 'independent American farmer' that he himself has remained blind to the fact that he's one of the hardest-working and poorest-paid men in America. See the houses they live in,—hovels."

"Yes, yes, I know," said Lily; a look of deeper pain swept over her face. "And the fate of the poor women, oh, the fate of the women!"

"Yes, it's a matter of statistics," went on Radbourn, pitilessly, "that the wives of the American farmers fill our insane asylums. See what a life they lead, most of them; no music, no books. Seventeen hours a day in a couple of small rooms—dens. Now there's Sim Burns! what a travesty of a home! Yet there are a dozen just as bad in sight. He works like a fiend,—so does his wife,—and what is their reward? Simply a hole to hibernate in and to sleep and eat in in summer. A dreary present and a well-nigh hopeless future. No, they have a future, if they knew it, and we must tell them."

"I know Mrs. Burns; she sends several children to my school. Poor, pathetic little things, half-clad and wistful-eyed. They make my heart ache; they are so hungry for love, and so quick to learn."

As they passed the Burns farm, they looked for the wife but she was not to be seen. The children had evidently gone up to the little white schoolhouse at the head of the lane. Radbourn let the reins fall slack as he talked on. He did not look at the girl, his eyebrows were drawn into a look of gloomy pain.

"It aint so much the grime that I abhor, nor the labor that crooks their backs and makes their hands bludgeons. It's the horrible waste of life involved in it all. I don't believe God intended a man to be bent to plow-handles like that, but that aint the worst of it. The worst of it is, these people live lives approaching automata. They become machines to serve others more lucky or more unscrupulous than themselves. What is the world of art, of music, of literature, to these poor devils—to Sim Burns and his wife there, for example? Or even to the best of these farmers?"

The girl looked away over the shimmering lake of yellow-green corn, a choking came into her throat. Her gloved hand trembled.

"What is such a life worth? It's all very comfortable for us to say, 'they don't feel it.' How do we know what they feel? What do we know of their capacity for enjoyment of art and music? They never have leisure or opportunity. The master is very glad to be taught by preacher, and lawyer, and novelist, that his slaves are contented and never feel any longings for a higher life. These people live lives but little higher than their cattle,—are forced to live so. Their hopes and aspirations are crushed out, their souls are twisted and deformed just as toil twists and deforms their bodies. They are on the same level as the city laborer. It makes me wild to think of it. The very religion they hear is a soporific. They are taught to be content here that they may be happy hereafter. Suppose there isn't any hereafter?"

"Oh, don't say that, please!" Lily cried.

"But I don't know that there is," looking up at her pitilessly, "and I do know that these people are being robbed of something more than money, of all that makes life worth living. The promise of milk and honey in Canaan is all very well, but I prefer to have mine here, then I'm sure of it."

"What can we do?" murmured the girl.

"Do? Rouse these people for one thing; preach discontent, a noble discontent."

"It will only make them unhappy."

"No, it won't, not if you show them the way out. If it does, it's better to be unhappy striving for higher things, like a man, than to be content in a wallow like swine."

"But what is the way out?"

This was sufficient to set Radbourn upon his hobby-horse. He outlined his plan of action, the abolition of all indirect taxes. The State control of all privileges, the private ownership of which interfered with the equal rights of all. He would utterly destroy speculative holdings of the earth. He would have land everywhere brought to its best use, by appropriating all ground rents to the use of the State, etc., etc., to which the girl listened with eager interest but with only partial comprehension.

As they neared the little schoolhouse, a swarm of midgets in pink dresses, pink sun-bonnets, and brown legs, came rushing to meet their teacher, with that peculiar devotion the children in the country develop for a refined teacher.

Radbourn helped Lily out into the midst of the eager little scholars, who swarmed upon her like bees on a lump of sugar, till even Radbourn's gravity gave way, and he smiled into her lifted eyes—an unusual smile, that strangely enough stopped the smile on her own lips, filling her face with a wistful shadow, and her breath came hard for a moment and she trembled.

She loved that cold, stern face, oh, so much! and to have him smile was a pleasure that made her heart leap till she suffered a smothering pain. She turned to him to say:—

"I am very thankful, Mr. Radbourn, for another pleasant ride," adding in a lower tone, "It was a very great pleasure; you always give me so much. I feel stronger and more hopeful."

"I'm glad you feel so. I was afraid I was prosy with my land-doctrine."

"Oh no! Indeed no! You have given me a new hope; I am exalted with the thought; I shall try to think it all out and apply it."

And so they parted, the children looking on and slyly whispering among themselves. Radbourn looked back after awhile but the bare little hive had absorbed its little group, and was standing bleak as a tombstone and hot as a furnace on the naked plain in the blazing sun.

"America's pitiful boast!" said the young radical looking back at it. "Only a miserable hint of what it might be."

All that forenoon as Lily faced her little group of barefoot children, she was thinking of Radbourn, of his almost fierce sympathy for these poor supine farmers, hopeless, and in some cases content in their narrow lives. The children almost worshipped the beautiful girl who came to them as a revelation of exquisite neatness and taste,—whose very voice and intonation awed them.

They noted (unconsciously, of course,) every detail. Snowy linen, touches of soft color, graceful lines of bust and side—the slender fingers that could almost speak, so beautifully flexile were they. Lily herself sometimes, when she shook the calloused, knotted, stiffened hands of the women, shuddered with sympathetic pain, to think that the crowning wonder and beauty of God's world should be so maimed and distorted from its true purpose.

Even in the children before her she could see the inherited results of fruitless labor—and more pitiful yet in the bent shoulders of the older ones she could see the beginnings of deformity that would soon be permanent. And as these things came to her, she clasped the poor wondering things to her side with a convulsive wish to make life a little brighter for them.

"How is your mother, Sadie?" she asked of Sadie Burns, as she was eating her luncheon on the drab-colored table near the open window.

"Purty well," said Sadie in a hesitating way.

Lily was looking out, and listening to the gophers whistling as they raced to and fro. She could see Bob Burns lying at length on the grass in the pasture over the fence, his heels waving in the air, his hands holding a string which formed a snare. Bob was "death on gophers." It was like fishing to young Izaak Walton.

It was very still and hot and the cheep and trill of the gophers, and the chatter of the kingbirds alone broke the silence. A cloud of butterflies were fluttering about a pool near, a couple of big flies buzzed and mumbled on the pane.

"What ails your mother?" Lily asked, recovering herself and looking at Sadie who was distinctly ill at ease.

"Oh, I dunno," Sadie replied, putting one bare foot across the other.

Lily insisted.

"She 'n' pa's had an awful row—"

"Sadie!" said the teacher warningly, "what language!"

"I mean they quarrelled, an' she don't speak to him any more."

"Why, how dreadful!"

"An' pa he's awful cross,—and she won't eat when he does, an' I haf to wait on table."

"I believe I'll go down and see her this noon," said Lily to herself, as she divined a little of the state of affairs in the Burns family.

Sim was mending the pasture fence as Lily came down the road toward him. He had delayed going to dinner to finish his task and was just about ready to go when Lily spoke to him.

"Good-morning, Mr. Burns. I am just going down to see Mrs. Burns. It must be time to go to dinner—aren't you ready to go? I want to talk with you."

Ordinarily he would have been delighted with the idea of walking down the road with the schoolma'am, but there was something in her look which seemed to tell him that she knew all about his trouble, and beside he was not in good humor.

"Yes, in a minnit,—soon's I fix up this hole. Them shoats, I b'leeve, would go through a keyhole, if they could once git their snoots in."

He expanded on this idea as he nailed away, anxious to gain time. He foresaw trouble for himself. He couldn't be rude to this sweet and fragile girl. If a man had dared to attack him on his domestic shortcomings, he could have fought. The girl stood waiting for him, her large, steady eyes full of thought, gazing down at him from the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat.

"The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best we can to make it less," she said at last in a musing tone, as if her thoughts had unconsciously taken on speech. She had always appealed to him strongly, and never more so than in this softly uttered abstraction,—that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.

He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box, and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to her talk.

"Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies, surely we ought to bear with our—friends." She went on adapting her steps to his. He took off his torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being much embarrassed and ashamed. Not knowing how to meet such argument, he kept silent.

"How is Mrs. Burns?" said Lily at length, determined to make him speak. The delicate meaning in the emphasis laid on is did not escape him.

"Oh, she's all right,—I mean she's done her work jest the same as ever. I don't see her much—"

"I didn't know—I was afraid she was sick. Sadie said she was acting strangely."

"No, she's well enough—but,—"

"But what is the trouble? Won't you let me help you, won't you?"

"Can't anybody help us. We've got 'o fight it out, I s'pose," he replied, a gloomy note of resentment creeping into his voice. "She's ben in a devil of a temper f'r a week."

"Haven't you been in the same kind of a temper too?" demanded Lily, firmly, but kindly. "I think most troubles of this kind come from bad temper on both sides. Don't you? Have you done your share at being kind and patient?"

They had reached the gate now, and she laid her hand on his arm to stop him. He looked down at the slender gloved hand on his arm feeling as if a giant had grasped him, then he raised his eyes to her face, flushing a purplish red as he remembered his grossness. It seemed monstrous in the presence of this girl-advocate. Her face was like silver, her eyes seemed pools of tears.

"I don't s'pose I have," he said at last pushing by her. He couldn't have stood her glance another moment. His whole air conveyed the impression of destructive admission. Lily did not comprehend the extent of her advantage or she would have pursued it further. As it was she felt a little hurt as she entered the house. The table was set, but Mrs. Burns was nowhere to be seen. Calling her softly, the young girl passed through the shabby little living room to the oven-like bedroom which opened off it, but no one was about. She stood for a moment shuddering at the wretchedness of the room.

Going back to the kitchen she found Sim about beginning on his dinner; little Pet was with him, the rest of the children were at the schoolhouse.

"Where is she?"

"I d' know. Out in the garden I expect. She don't eat with me now. I never see her. She don't come near me. I aint seen her since Saturday."

Lily was shocked inexpressibly and began to see clearer the magnitude of the task she had set herself to do. But it must be done; she felt that a tragedy was not far off. It must be averted.

"Mr. Burns, what have you done? What have you done?" she asked in terror and horror.

"Don't lay it all to me! She hain't done nawthin' but complain f'r ten years. I couldn't do nothin' to suit her. She was always naggin' me."

"I don't think Lucretia Burns would nag anybody. I don't say you're all to blame, but I'm afraid you haven't acknowledged you were any to blame. I'm afraid you've not been patient with her. I'm going out to bring her in. If she comes will you say you were part to blame? You needn't beg her pardon, just say you'll try to be better. Will you do it? Think how much she has done for you! Will you?"

He remained silent, and looked discouragingly rude. His sweaty, dirty shirt was open at the neck, his arms were bare, his scraggly teeth were yellow with tobacco, and his uncombed hair lay tumbled about on his high, narrow head. His clumsy, unsteady hands played with the dishes on the table. His pride was struggling with his sense of justice; he knew he ought to consent, and yet it was so hard to acknowledge himself to blame. The girl went on in a voice piercingly sweet, trembling with pity and pleading.

"What word can I carry to her from you? I'm going to go and see her. If I could take a word from you, I know she would come back to the table. Shall I tell her you feel to blame?"

The answer was a long time coming; at last the man nodded an assent, the sweat pouring from his purple face. She had set him thinking, her victory was sure.

Lily almost ran out into the garden and to the strawberry patch, where she found Lucretia in her familiar, colorless, shapeless dress, picking berries in the hot sun, the mosquitoes biting her neck and hands.

"Poor, pathetic, dumb sufferer," the girl thought as she ran up to her.

She dropped her dish as she heard Lily coming, and gazed up into the tender, pitying face. Not a word was spoken, but something she saw there made her eyes fill with tears, and her throat swell. It was pure sympathy. She put her arms around the girl's neck and sobbed for the first time since Friday night. Then they sat down on the grass under the hedge and she told her story, interspersed with Lily's horrified comments.

When it was all told the girl still sat listening. She heard Radbourn's calm, slow voice again. It helped her not to hate Burns; it helped her to pity and understand him.

"You must remember that such toil brutalizes a man; it makes him callous, selfish, unfeeling necessarily. A fine nature must either adapt itself to its hard surroundings or die. Men who toil terribly in filthy garments day after day and year after year cannot easily keep gentle; the frost and grime, the heat and cold will sooner or later enter into their souls. The case is not all in favor of the suffering wives, and against the brutal husbands. If the farmer's wife is dulled and crazed by her routine, the farmer himself is degraded and brutalized. They are both products of a social system, victims of a land system, which produces tenement houses in the city, and pushes the farmer into a semi-solitude—victims of land laws that are relics of feudalism, made in the interest of the man who holds a special privilege in the earth. Free America has set up on its soil the systems of land-owning which produces the lord and the tenant; that glorifies speculation in the earth, and gives the priceless riches of the hills and forests into a few hands. But this will not continue—it can't continue. The awakening understanding of America cries out against it."

As well as she could Lily explained all this to the woman who lay with her face buried in the girl's lap. Lily's arms were about her thin shoulders in an agony of pity.

"It's hard, Lucretia, I know, more than you can bear, but you mustn't forget what Sim endures, too. He goes out in the storms and in the heat and dust. His boots are hard, and see how his hands are all bruised and broken by his work! He was tired and hungry when he said that—he didn't really mean it."

The wife remained silent.

"Mr. Radbourn says work as things go now does degrade a man in spite of himself. He says men get coarse and violent in spite of themselves just as women do when everything goes wrong in the house,—when the flies are thick, and the fire won't burn, and the irons stick to the clothes. You see, you both suffer. Don't lay up this fit of temper against Sim—will you?"

The wife lifted her head and looked away. Her face was full of hopeless weariness.

"It aint this once. It aint that 't all. It's having no let up. Just goin' the same thing right over 'n' over—no hope of anything better."

"If you had a hope of another world—"

"Don't talk that—that's rich man's doctrine. I don't want that kind o' comfert. I want a decent chance here. I want 'o rest an' be happy now—then I'm sure of it."

Lily's big eyes were streaming with tears. What should she say to the desperate woman?

"What's the use? We might jest as well die—all of us."

The woman's livid face appalled the beautiful girl. She was gaunt, heavy-eyed, nerveless. Her faded dress settled down over her limbs showing the swollen knees and thin calves, her hands with distorted joints protruded painfully from her sleeves. And all about was the ever-recurring wealth and cheer of nature that knows no fear or favor. The bees and flies buzzing in the sun, the jay and kingbird in the poplars, the smell of strawberries, the motion of lush grass, the shimmer of corn blades tossed gayly as banners in a conquering army.

Like a flash of keener light a sentence shot across the girl's mind. "Nature knows no title-deed. The bounty of her mighty hands falls as the sunlight falls, copious, impartial; her seas carry all ships, her air is for all lips, her lands for all feet."

"Poverty and suffering such as yours will not last." There was something in the girl's voice that roused the woman. She turned her dull eyes upon her face.

Lily took her hand in both hers as if by a caress she could impart her own faith.

"Look up, dear. When Nature is so good and generous, man must come to be better, surely. Come, go in the house again. Sim is there, he expects you, he told me to tell you he was sorry." Lucretia's face twitched a little at that, but her head was bent. "Come, you can't live this way. There isn't any other place to go to."

No, that was the bitterest truth. Where on this wide earth with its forth-shooting fruits and grains, its fragrant lands and shining seas, could this dwarfed, bent, broken, middle-aged woman go? Nobody wanted her, nobody cared for her. But the wind kissed her drawn lips as readily as those of the girl, and the blooms of clover nodded to her as if to a queen.

Lily had said all she could. Her heart ached with unspeakable pity and a sort of terror.

"Don't give up, Lucretia. This may be the worst hour of your life. Live and bear with it all for Christ's sake—for your children's sake. Sim told me to tell you he was to blame. If you will only see that you are both to blame and yet neither to blame, then you can rise above it. Try, dear!"

The wife pulled herself together, rose silently, and started toward the house. Her face was rigid but no longer sullen. Lily followed her slowly, wonderingly.

As she neared the kitchen door, she saw Sim still sitting at the table; his face was unusually grave and soft. She saw him start and shove back his chair,—saw Lucretia go to the stove and lift the tea-pot, and heard her say, as she took her seat beside the baby,—

"Want some more tea?"

She had become a wife and mother again, but in what spirit the puzzled girl could not say.



EDITORIAL NOTES.

AN EPOCH-MARKING DRAMA.

A movement destined, I think, to be in a degree epoch-marking in the dramatic annals of the American stage, was inaugurated by Mr. James A. Herne, on the fourth of May, in Boston, in the production of his remarkable realistic drama, "Margaret Fleming," at Chickering Hall. The play is a bold innovation, so much so that no theatre in the city would produce it, although the various managers who examined it declared it to be as strong as and no less powerful than any American drama yet written. The character of the audience was as striking as the play was brave and original. It was, indeed, a strange sight to see such well-known and thoughtful men and women as Mr. William Dean Howells, Rev. Minot J. Savage, Rabbi Solomon Schindler, Rev. Edward A. Horton, Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, Hamlin Garland, and a score or more of persons almost as well known in literary, religious, and thoughtful circles, assembled on the first night of a dramatic production. Nor was the character of the audience less remarkable during the fortnight it was played. Men and women who are rarely seen at theatres attended two, three, and even four performances. The superb acting of Mr. and Mrs. Herne contributed much to the success of the play; curiosity also doubtless attracted many, yet beyond and above this was the deep appreciation of a thoughtful and intelligent constituency, who saw in this drama the marvellous possibilities of the stage for improvement as well as entertainment. They also saw real life depicted. The absence of empty lines and stilted phrases so common in conventional drama was refreshing and interesting to those who believe that the drama has a mission other than merely to amuse. "Margaret Fleming" is nothing if not artistic from the standpoint of the realist. Its fidelity to life as we find it—to existing conditions and types of society,—is wonderful. Its dramatic strength is none the less marked. But aside from and above all this, for me it has a far greater merit—utility. I have no sympathy with the flippant, effeminate, and senile cry, "Art for art's sake"; that is the echo of a decaying civilization, the voice of Greece and Rome in their decline. It is the shibboleth of a people drunken with pleasure; of a popular conscience anaesthetized; the cry of sensualism and selfishness popular with shallow minds and bloodless hearts; the incarnation of that fatal effeminacy that springs from a union of wealth and superficial intellectuality; the voice of a human automaton without a soul. Victor Hugo has made no utterances more grandly true than when he pleads for the beautiful being made the servant of progress as voiced in the following sentiment:

"Be of some service. Do not be fastidious when so much depends upon being efficient and good. Art for art's sake may be very fine, but art for progress is finer still. Ah! you must think? Then think of making man better. Courage! Let us consecrate ourselves. Let us devote ourselves to the good, to the true, to the just; it is well for us to do so. Some pure lovers of art, moved by a solicitude which is not without its dignity, discard the formula, 'Art for Progress,' the Beautiful Useful, fearing lest the useful should deform the beautiful. They tremble to see the drudge's hand attached to the muse's arm. According to them, the ideal may become perverted by too much contact with reality. They are solicitous for the sublime, if it descends as far as to humanity. They are in error. The useful, far from circumscribing the sublime, enlarges it. But critics protest: To undertake the cure of social evils; to amend the codes; to impeach law in the court of right to utter those hideous words, 'penitentiary,' 'convict-keeper,' 'galley-slave,' 'girl of the town'; to inspect the police registers; to contract the business of dispensaries; to study the questions of wages and want of work; to taste the black bread of the poor; to seek labor for the working-woman; to confront fashionable idleness with ragged sloth; to throw down the partition of ignorance; to open schools; to teach little children how to read; to attack shame, infamy, error, vice, crime, want of conscience; to preach the multiplication of spelling-books; to improve the food of intellects and of hearts; to give meat and drink; to demand solutions for problems and shoes for naked feet,—these things they declare are not the business of the azure. Art is the azure. Yes, art is the azure; but the azure from above, whence falls the ray which swells the wheat, yellows the maize, rounds the apple, gilds the orange, sweetens the grape. Again I say, a further service is an added beauty. At all events, where is the diminution? To ripen the beet-root, to water the potato, to increase the yield of lucern, of clover, or of hay; to be a fellow-workman with the ploughman, the vinedresser, and the gardener,—this does not deprive the heavens of one star. Immensity does not despise utility,—and what does it lose by it? Does the vast vital fluid that we call magnetic or electric flash through the cloud-masses with less splendor because it consents to perform the office of pilot to a bark, and to keep constant to the north the little needle intrusted to it, the gigantic guide? Yet the critics insist that to compose social poetry, human poetry, popular poetry; to grumble against the evil and laud the good, to be the spokesman of public wrath, to insult despots, to make knaves despair, to emancipate man before he is of age, to push souls forward and darkness backward, to know that there are thieves and tyrants, to clean penal cells, to flush the sewer of public uncleanness,—is not the function of art! Why not? Homer was the geographer and historian of his time, Moses the legislator of his, Juvenal the judge of his, Dante the theologian of his, Shakespeare the moralist of his, Voltaire the philosopher of his. No region, in speculation or in fact, is shut to the mind. Here a horizon, there wings; freedom for all to soar. To sing the ideal, to love humanity, to believe in progress, to pray toward the infinite. To be the servant of God in the task of progress, and the apostle of God to the people,—such is the law which regulates growth. All power is duty. Should this power enter into repose in our age? Should duty shut its eyes? And is the moment come for art to disarm? Less than ever. Thanks to 1789, the human caravan has reached a high plateau; and, the horizon being vaster, art has more to do. This is all. To every widening of the horizon, an enlargement of conscience corresponds. We have not reached the goal. Concord condensed into felicity, civilization summed up in harmony,—that is yet far off. The theatre is a crucible of civilization. It is a place of human communion. All its phases need to be studied. It is in the theatre that the public soul is formed."

The theatre may be made the most potent engine for progress and reform. We are living in the midst of the most splendid age which has dawned since humanity first fronted the morning, dimly conscious of its innate power and the possibilities that lay imbedded in its being; an era of life, growth, warfare. On the one hand are ancient thought and prejudice, on the other the inspiration of greater liberty and a nobler manhood. On the one hand selfishness, sensuality, vulgar ostentation, avarice, luxury, and moral effeminacy crying, "Art for art's sake," demanding amusements that will aid in dissipating any moral strength or deep thought that still lingers in the mind, and literature that shall enable one to kill time without the slightest suspicion of intellectual exertion; physical, mental, and moral ennui, with an assumed lofty contempt for utility. On the other hand we have the gathering forces of the dawn, demanding "art for progress," declaring that beauty must be the handmaid of duty; that art must wait on justice, liberty, fraternity, nobility, morality, and intellectual honesty,—in a word the forces in league with light must compel the beautiful to make radiant the pathway of the future. In the union of art and utility lies the supreme excellence of "Margaret Fleming," it deals with one of the most pressing problems of our present civilization; it is the most powerful plea for an equal standard of morals for men and women that I have ever heard. This thought, it is true, like the entire drama, is anything but conventional; it breathes the spirit of the coming day. The subtile bondage and servility of woman, a vestige of the barbarous past, still taints our civilization. Far more is demanded by society of her than of man, and when heretofore she has raised her voice against this inequity she has been silenced by unworthy imputations. It is the shame of our age that woman is not accorded a higher meed of justice. She has a right to demand that the man who marries her be every whit as pure and moral as herself, and until she makes this demand, and holds herself from the contamination of moral lepers, no substantial progress for higher morals and purer life will be made. Unless woman checks the increasing degradation of manhood, man will sooner or later drag her to his deplorable level. "Margaret Fleming" shows this truth and points to the woman of to-day her stern and inexorable duty.