suredly comfortable. If it had not given her spasms of passionate joy, at least it had not withheld from her the compensating, if milder, pleasures of creature-comfort and intellectual enjoyment. She had had a good time, had not dealt unjustly with those about her, had borne a son who was a joy and a satisfaction to her; above all, she had achieved a poise which allowed her to judge men and matters equitably, in their true proportion. No man in later years had been able to shake her from this poise, and of the men of earlier days Richard Blair alone had shown potentiality for exercising emotional influence over her. In all her life he had embodied the sole active enigma worth mentioning, had been the only human being about whom she had felt great unsatisfied curiosity, and even that curiosity had been deadened almost to nullification by time and circumstance. As she sat resting, therefore, her thoughts, drawn back to Blair little more than casually by the morning's sight of him, were pleasantly contemplative; yet, there obtruded itself to vex her to a slight impatience the impression she had gathered at the last. What had life brought to this man who had once meant much to her, and what would it have brought, if-well, if things had been different?

A discreet knock sounded at the door, and a bellboy entered with a card. Reading the name, Mrs. Wetherell was surprised that she was not more surprised; somehow, now that the thing had actually occurred, it seemed but natural and expected that Blair should come to see her. In the interval between the bellboy's departure and the advent of the visitor, she sat smiling to herself, almost tenderly; of a verity, her dead youth was coming back to her for an hour.

Blair entered and stood before her.

"Hello, Ripple!" he exclaimed, stretching out his hand in the old impulsive way, and raising one eyebrow with the old whimsical quirk.

The

Mrs. Wetherell stared, then laughed. "Why, Dick!" she said, and gave him both hands. nickname by which he called her touched a chord that thrilled; he had given her the name because, as he said, everything about her seemed to ripple; her form, and her wavy hair, and the laughter in her eyes. No one but he had ever

used it.

After the greeting there ensued a momentary embarrassment, on Mrs. Wetherell's part, at least, unfamiliar. She indicated a chair by the window, and he sat down looking at her and smiling, one eyebrow still raised.

"I escaped," he said. "The Philistines are on my trail, and the Lord knows how soon they'll run me down! I wanted to have an hour with you, Ripple. You don't mind, do you?"

"No," said Mrs. Wetherell, smiling back at him, "I don't mind. She was thinking how worn and tired he looked, despite the old-time cheerfulness, now that the mask had dropped. "Tell me about yourself, Dick. How are you getting on? Though I suppose the question's impertinent. in view of your evident greatness."

"No question from you is impertinent," he returned. There was the suspicion of a hardening in his eyes. "I'm getting on very well, thank you, my dear; I can't complain of the loaves and fishes-or of the multitude who clamor."

"Oh, pshaw!" said Mrs., Wetherell, mindful of her method of handling him aforetime. "Remember, I saw you this morning, Dick. You can't cheat me with your pose.'

For an instant lightning flashed from the presidential eyes; then Blair laughed. "What I always loved about you, Ripple,' he said, "was your straightforwardness. I see that you haven't changed in that respect. Well, to be frank, it hasn't been all clear sailing; it isn't now. Оссаsional reefs stick up on the horizon, and all that, you know.

You

Mrs. Wetherell regarded him from between narrowed lids. "Bosh! Have you lost your sense of humor, Dick? used to tell me things. Have you forgotten how, or must we two resort to the fencing of acquaintanceship?"

"Why do you ask?" inquired Blair slowly. "Do you wish me to turn myself inside out for your amusement-as it was in the old days?"

The slow blood crept into Mrs. Wetherell's cheeks. "Do you honestly believe that I did that?" she asked, in a low voice. "That I used you simply for purposes of amusement?"

"I don't know," he answered, looking at her steadily. "I've never known. All

"Would you like me to tell you what I think of this great institution? I think it a bore, root and, branch, save only when its denizens amuse me with their trivial idiosyncrasies. Oh, yes, it is a great thing, very dignified, very useful, but it bores me, and I hate it. I hate the drudgery, the cloistered atmosphere, above all the stupidity of the place! Often and often, when, seated at the head of the table in Faculty Meeting, I've listened to some old woman in pants expounding his opinion by the hour as to whether a certain utterly immaterial course should be kept up or dropped, I've ached to hurl an inkstand at his reverend head! Do you know that in all the body of teachers there are only two men who are flesh-and-blood?, The others are mere compendia of statistics, respectable, and useful in their way, but dry as chips or weak as water, and oh, vastly irritating. And as for me, why, I'm the most cut-and-dried of them all. I do my official work, and sit heavily in my official chair, but don't imagine that I like it-don't dare to imagine that I like it!"

...

"You've not changed very much, after all," observed Mrs. Wetherell reflectively.

"No," he agreed grimly, "I haven't changed very much-except that now I'm a respectable citizen, and a 'prominent educator.' Before, I was only a rather reprehensible boy who might have become almost anything. But in the essentials I have not changed. Do you know why I have not changed?" He still leaned forward, smiling, but now his eyes burned above the smile.

"I can guess, I think," she said, meeting his look. "You told me a reason why you would not change once. I did not believe it, then; it seemed very boyish and somewhat absurd. It seems rather tragic, now, if you'll pardon the adjective; you used to abhor tragedy I remember. Have you never forgotten? I don't understand such things very well, but I think I should

I know is that I did amuse you, whether you wished it or not. Now, I am done with furnishing that kind of amusement; I play on another stage.

"Do you always play?" she asked, curiously. "Always," he replied, without pause. "All my life I have been a clown, arrayed in motley of my own making. As I told you many years ago, you were the only person to whom I ever showed my real self; the exception has not lost its force to prove the rule, though it was my luck to be most amusing when most in earnest. So that I may fairly say that I have been all my life on the boards.

"At least, you have been a successful actor." "Eh, do you think so, my dear?" He leaned forward, smiling. "Do you think it success to have attained to the nominal leadership of this University?" With the word a peculiar sneer crept into his voice.

like to know that much, at least. It seems very strange, and-rather wonderful.'

"Then, if it is any satisfaction to you," said he, "I will tell you that I have never forgotten. Day in and day out, I've longed for the sight of you, for the sound of your voice, and for the touch of your hands in love -you had beautiful hands, Ripple, and they are beautiful still. I told you that I should not change; I've kept my word. My love for you has been my one sincere emotion, has enabled me to live my life strongly, has kept me in a degree young. To me you have been the only ideal. Whenever I have known beauty, have seen a red sunset at sea, or heard splendid music, I have wished that you were with me, to share and understand the call of the marvelous things in the world. For you had the power to understand those things, my dear, and I could have brought that power

out-I could have brought it out. No other man understood you as I did, or loved you so well. I never lied

to you, Ripple."

"It seems incredible," said Mrs. Wetherell. "Are you sure you are not acting now?"

Blair laughed. "Ah, that is the penalty I pay," he said. "I've clowned it so much and so long that now, when I am in earnest, I can not be believed."

"On the contrary," she rejoined slowly, "I believe you. I don't think you would trouble to lie to me now, when we are both old and you have nothing to gain. Tell me more of this love of yours, Dick. It interests me, for man's love, as I have seen it, has seemed to me selfish and-shall I say it?-more than a little vulgar. Is yours different?"

He was silent for a moment. "Again I pay a penalty," he said then. "There has been so much dross in my life that I am unable to coin the true metal when I have the opportunity. Though I have still the soul of a poet, time and hypocrisy have robbed me of a poet's ability of expression. I can not speak of love as once I could have spoken. Eh, as for that, can any man define love? It is in the blue of the sky, in the rush of the waters, as much as in a woman's eyes. All nature is a part of love, and one must feel to know it. Perhaps, in the ultimate, it is the only thing really worth knowing.'

"I think," said Mrs. Wetherell, after another pause, "that I have missed something, for I have never loved any one greatly except my son, and a mother's love is of a kind apart from all others."

He smiled with a return of his old cynicism. "If you have not known love's pleasure, at least you have not suffered from love's pain." He seemed to consider. "Would it stretch your credulity if I told you that my wife has never noticed anything-has never known, in fine, that I did not love her?" "Impossible," said Mrs. Wetherell frowning. "A

woman living with a man must always know whether he loves her or not. Any one of a thousand little daily occurrences will tell her."

Again Blair laughed, this time with bitter enjoyment. "Now, you underestimate my ability for acting. Loving you constantly, I have lavished on her day by day, calculatingly, all those little attentions which I should have shown you if the Fates had been kind. In that, as in many other ways, I was paying my score with the world, paying with pain for the good which life had dealt me.

A cold light had crept into Mrs. Wetherell's eyes. "What would happen," she asked, "if she should discover your falseness?"

"She would go mad, I think," he answered calmly. "She has always loved me and believed in my love."

There was silence for a moment. Then Mrs. Wetherell said: "Do you know, you repel me? This life of yours seems to me cold, snaky, utterly false and repulsive." "You'll often chance on snakes, if you venture into swamps," he returned, unmoved. "Yes, I suppose you are right, and I am repulsive. In youth I was attractive; I can say it now without undue conceit, being old, or, at any rate, nearly So. Now the very qualities which made me attractive then make me repulsive. I have been long on the stage, the paint has cracked, and the wrinkles show. Yet I must play out my part, and you, my dear, should be the last to reproach me, since you alone have had the opportunity to see whatever there is of good in me. I would have done much for you."

"True," she said, "I deserve the reproach. It's all very strange. If things had been different, if you had persisted, had overridden my will, had urged a little longer, perhaps. I don't Perhaps we should both have learned more, both have been happier. Tell me one thing, Dick: if you hate the University so, why did you elect to follow its life?"

know.

"The chance offered itself," he answered, "and I took it. Any other occupation would have been the same, without you. I was a man, and I had to play a man's part, that was all; the stage mattered little. Well, I think I may say that I have been a good actor. I've given the University good service, and if I have laughed in my heart of hearts, why, the laughter has hurt no one save myself. Also, it would be unjust to say that I have not felt a certain pride in my acting, for such pride was inevitable. It has amused me to be deferred to, revered, looked up to, if only officially and by people whose intellectual trend I despised. I have enjoyed being toasted at alumni and public dinners, as the head of a great institution of learning. I have liked to make speeches, to preside at 'functions.' Adulation, sickening and hypocritical though it might be, has been sweet to me, for I am a vain man. For these pleasures I have paid heavily in work and pain. When I die I shall owe the University nothing, for though I hate it and scorn it, I have served it well, squaring the account as I went along. I earned the steps of my promotion, and owe no man anything I was raised to the presidency-in the face of much jealousy-solely because it was judged that I would carry out the policy of the institution logically. I have done so, sleeping little, and laboring much, and I shall continue to do so to the end. The University trusts me, and I must not betray that trust. Although another man might do the work

as well as I, I have set my hand to the plow, and must finish the furrow; or, more aptly, I have taken the rôle, and must play it to the end of the run.

He paused, and there was a moment's silence. Mrs. Wetherell did not break it, and Blair seemed to be busy with his thoughts. He no longer looked at her, but toward the window, with a dreamy expression foreign to the presidential dignity. Again she noted the weariness of his face in repose, the hollow temples, the sunken nostrils, the pallor of the lips; if he had clung, iron-willed, to the youth of his mind, it was indisputably true that age had crept prematurely upon his body. When at last he spoke it was in a different voice, a voice in which the querulousness of old age was strangely intermingled with the fire of his passionate youth, saved at so much cost. For once he dropped the mask of which the strings had been loosened by the sight of the woman he loved.

"I am weary," he said, "weary of myself and of all these things among which I live. What do they all matter? There are so many beautiful things in the world, and I have seen so few of them! For a quarter of a century-the best years of my life-I have been chained to a corpse, slave to a phantom of duty. In reality, I have not lived those years; in reality Richard Blair, the man, has been in a trance since that evening, more than twenty-five years ago, when he parted from you at Shallow Cove. Do you remember that evening, Ripple?"

He turned to her with flashing eyes, and she met the look steadily, a little puzzled.

"I remember it-after a fashion," she answered. "Yes," he said, "that is how you would remember it. But I remember it as though it were yesterday. You were to leave for the city the next morning, and I asked you to go canoeing with me on the Bay, at sunset. There was no wind, nor any cloud in the sky; the water of the Bay was like glass, and the sun was a ball of fire, throwing crimson light that turned to purple and mauve as it sank. We were alone together on the Bay, you and I; most of the cottagers had gone, and there was a slight touch of autumn in the air-just that tinge of sadness necessary to complete the beauty of

the scene. All was silent around us; we were too far from shore to hear the faint lapping of the water on the beach, and the canoe moved noiselessly save for the slight rippling at the bows, and the drip from the paddle-blade. It was one of those rare times when Nature calls to man and woman, and the man and the woman are there to answer Nature's call. I added my call to Nature's. You understood, and could have loved me then, but you were afraid. You dared not take the risk. Ah!" he struck his hand sharply against the chair arm-"one does not get things by being afraid, by refusing to take risks!" He stopped for a moment, then finished more quietly. "Since then I have not advanced. Life has given me little more than this; the memory of that evening, and dreams-dreams."

The last word fell lingeringly from his lips, and afterward there was silence for some moments. Then he rose, and moved restlessly about the room, touching an ornament on the mantel, pushing a chair into place against the wall. Mrs. Wetherell also rose and walked to the window. He joined her, and they stood side by side for a few seconds looking out unseeing into the night; then, with a slight inclination of the head, she crossed the low sill, stepping out on to the little balcony beyond, and he followed.

The front of the hotel, facing Heath Street and the corner of the University Campus opposite, was garishly lighted, with strong contrast of shadows, by the arc light on the corner. Its balconies, above and below the one occupied by Mrs. Wetherell and Blair, were lined with parties of Commencement guests, driven to the outer air to escape the heat within. For the nonce the University owned the town, and though it was Sunday night the festal gaiety of spirit was not greatly dampened. The street below was thronged with the crowds released from evening service at the churches, reenforced and interspersed with groups of errant collegians, graduate and undergraduate, clad in violent clothes of a fantastic cut, suitable to the irresponsibility of the occasion. Other groups, from time to time emerging from the comparative darkness of the Campus, added themselves spasmodically to the pro

cession, talking, laughing, pushing goodnaturedly, enjoying themselves in general, and doing nothing in particular. As one such section, perhaps a dozen strong, crossed the street, its leader, glancing up at the front of the Ware House, chanced to recognize in the glare of the electric light President Blair. The glamour of graduation and the June nights was upon him and his fellows. They formed a cluster in the middle of the street, and one saw the leader raise his arms with a jerky motion, heard him count thrice, snappily. Then the long University cheer broke and rolled forth from the group, with as much volume and velocity as a dozen pairs of brass lungs could give it, and with the name "Blair!" thrice repeated, explosive and ignorant of prefix, tacked on to the end for good

measure.

There was a momentary slackening of pace among those on the sidewalk. A number of passers-by stopped and craned their necks to see what the "rah-rah boys" were cheering about. But to the majority the occurrence possessed the triviality of the commonplace. The University cheer made no unusual sound on Heath Street, especially at that season. Moreover, the president was invisible to those directly beneath, and as for the authors of the cheer themselves, they scattered about their business immediately after the effort, apparently a trifle ashamed of the enthusiasm of their outburst, coming on the Sabbath evening. So it chanced that no one save the woman beside him saw clearly the changing expression of Richard Blair's face, and she with all her acquired callousness turned away her eyes.

When she looked again the mask, immobile, harsh, ghastly in its significance, had been resumed; but before she had time to break the tension with some everyday remark, there came to them through the clear air the sound of the Blaisdell Chapel chimes, borne from the farther side of the Campus by a southerly wind. First came four sweet singsong notes, then followed nine insistent strokes marking the hour. Blair's lips-the lips of the mask-opened stiffly.

"The call for Harlequin," he said.

THE

I

AM one of those who, until comparatively recently, was an ignorant opponent of woman suffrage. I felt that what we needed was more education, more discipline, rather than more liberty, not realizing that the higher discipline can come only through liberty.

I was not alone in my error. It turns out that not only have men a great deal still to learn about women, but that women have a great deal to learn about themselves. I have been prosecuting my education in this direction almost daily since a certain memorable afternoon in Trafalgar Square when I first heard women talking politics in public. I went out of shamefaced curiosity, my head full of masculine criticism as to woman's limitations, her well-known inability to stick to the point, her poverty in logic and humor, and the impossibility, in any case, of her coping with the mob.

I had found in my own heart hitherto no firm assurance that these charges were not anchored in fact, but on that Sunday afternoon in front of Nelson's Monument I learned a new chapter in the lesson of faith in the capacities of women. Talking about it afterward with a well-known London editor, I found him sorrowfully admitting the day was coming when the vote could no longer be withheld from women. "But when. they get it," he asked, "won't we find they've lost more than they've gained?" He spoke of the deteriorating effect of public life on men. If it bore so hardly on the stronger masculine fibre, what effect must it have on the delicate, impressionable nature of woman? How shall she preserve what is best in character after tasting the intoxication of public victory or the humiliation of political defeat?

No Debaters to be Found

"I AM ready to believe you," he said, "when you tell me these suffragists can rule and sway the London crowds, but isn't it very bad for women, all this publicity and concentration of attention on themselves?" I answered that I was perhaps not so bad a person to put that question to, since I had spent the greater part of my adult existence under conditions where I could see the effect on character of just these fierce tests, save that in the theatre they operate innocent of political significance.

In common with many others of my old craft, I had seen how the actor's necessary preoccupation with things of the imagination may divorce him from the larger realities of life. His necessary concern about himself tends to impoverish his intellectual life, narrowing down existence till for him all the world's a stage in very truth, and all men merely "parts." But the great difference, in the common effect on character, between doing work on the stage and doing it in the political arena seems accounted for by the difference between the ambition that is obliged to concern itself with one's own advantage and the ambition that is obliged to concern itself with the advantage of other people. If I am to judge by the women I see working to win

the suffrage in England, there is something civilizing, ennobling, in giving up your life to a great impersonal object. When women such as these stand up in public to talk reform, their high earnestness, their forgetfulness of themselves, lends them a dignity that made my answer to the London editor's question as easy as it was honorable to the disfranchised sex.

We have got to a point in England where there is little need, and indeed little opportunity, to combat argument. But where the remaining opponents of woman suffrage own, with engaging frankness, that their prejudices against the innovation are irremovable, if these obstructionists are not too old in years or in spirit they will presently be advancing to the stool of repentance. If, however, their prejudices are indeed irremovable, they themselves are not. Those who, in the natural order, are to take their place will see the matter otherwise, for the future is on the side of woman's freedom. So keenly is this felt that in the hundreds of meetings, public and private, held throughout this country for the ventilation of the subject the prime difficulty encountered of late in getting up a debate is to find anybody who can be induced to oppose the notion. It has been discovered that all the telling arguments, witty or wise, are on the side of the

reform.

The old-fashioned opponent with his jargon about 'short hair and the shrieking sisterhood," all his poor little dingy rags of ridicule, have been blown to the winds of heaven, and he can find nothing new.

It is one of the signs of the reserve force behind the movement that everything ministers to it. The police magistrate sends a hundred unknown women to Holloway Gaol. They come out public characters, hot with tales of abuses in the prison system and the crying need for matrons and women inspectors. The authorities try to avoid repeating their error by making all such inconvenient prisoners thereafter first-class misdemeanants, and thus ensure their seeing less and having less material with which to stir the public conscience. But the public are quick to detect the fear behind the seeming leniency of the authorities.

Then again, at a later stage of the agitation, the police magistrate, in trying a fresh batch of prisoners, endeavors to rouse public indignation against the leaders of the movement by sternly rebuking them for allowing a mill girl of seventeen to come up from the provinces to assist in a London demonstration, in the course of which the girl was arrested, that being nothing less than what she had come for. She was a Lancashire delegate, representative of hundreds more who could not come themselves. The magistrate was full of a noble rage at "the cruelty of turning a girl of such tender age loose in London, as he expressed it. He seemed to count on setting men's hearts aflame at the bare idea of a young girl in the streets without her mother. That she should be in the London streets to testify to her interest in the laws governing women's honest work, that was indeed shameful!

"Why, this child," he said, "should be at school!"

And the outburst of wise and manly tenderness was reported in every paper in the land.

The working women opened incredulous eyes. They are so used to hearing their own ignorance urged against their claim to vote that they were stark amazed to find how strangely benighted are these great London gentlemen about the conditions governing the lives of the women they make laws for. School at seventeen? Why, this girl, like many more, had been earning her living in a mill since she was twelve, rising in the dawn and tramping, cold and half fed, to her work and returning wearily through slums whose haggard realism left this prematurely old "hand" of seventeen little to learn from London, even if she had no friends here, which of course is not the case. No woman, however lonely, who joins the English suffrage movement but has friends.

it.

While it seems obvious that women will presently obtain the right to vote upon the same terms, as the phrase goes, as that right is, or is to be, enjoyed by men, I am far from sure (though here I speak for myself alone) that the right will be much enjoyed by the women who are called on to pay the heaviest price for It is an argument for haste that should the suffrage be granted to-morrow the world may still have to wait for the generation that is to grow up in the exercise of public duty before women can take the personal satisfaction in it that some men do. It is well to emphasize this, since the issue is overlaid with cheap charges of notoriety-hunting and of hysteria.

For the Good of Granddaughters MANY of us believe self-control to be the highest expression of civilization, but we believe no less that only a sense of duty and a resolute self-mastery could bring women of the character of those who have done most for this cause to face the misunderstanding and the hideous discomforts that they have been called upon to bear. Every fair-minded person must realize it is very hard for women to face these things. It was George Eliot, I believe, who spoke with envy of those who could lead what she called the sheltered life. When women consider their own dignity and satisfaction alone it is the shelter that they choose. I am reminded of that happy tribe in the inclement North called the Kilsilraet, which, being interpreted out of the Eskimo tongue, is "the people who live out of the wind." Enviable folk these, for in the North it is not the still cold, but the wind, that kills. The vast majority of us women would belong to the Kilsilraet if we could with honor, though some of them tell me that it is because of our defective training.

But we may believe that the women of the future, brought up in the exercise of public duty, may find it, not duty alone, but pleasure as well. For this generation, the fighting and the sacrifice. But Richard Cobden's great-granddaughter will be able in the coming days to say with the poet: "Lo! how deep the corn along the battlefield."

ANOTHER DUMA DEAD

THE

He

HE second candle of constitutional government in Russia has flickered out, and the Empire is again wallowing in the darkness of blind despotism. On June 14 Premier Stolypin had all spectators excluded from the hall of the. Duma and the building surrounded by troops. then informed the House that unless it would consent to the exclusion of the entire Socialist Party, fifty-five strong, and authorize the arrest of sixteen members, whom he named, on a charge of conspiring to dethrone the Czar and set up a republic, the Government would be unable to work with Parliament. He demanded immediate action. Although staggered by this unexpected assault, the Duma met the crisis with dignity. It refused to accede to the Premier's demand for instant surrender, but appointed a committee to hear the Government's evidence. The committee met at once and pushed its work with diligence, and the Prosecutor recognized its authority by presenting his evidence before it, but without waiting for its report the Government precipitately dissolved the Duma at dawn on the morning of the 16th.

. The ukase of dissolution announced that a new Duma would be elected on September 14 and would meet November 14. In an accompanying manifesto the Czar recounted his grievances against the late House-its rejection of temporary laws, its refusal to condemn political murders, its delay in ratifying the budget, the revolutionary spirit of many of its members, its abuse of the right of interpellation, and its failure to comply at once with the Government's demands in connection with the Socialist members. In the characteristic Russian fashion of working parliamentary institutions, the palace of the Duma was garrisoned by troops, nine of the sixteen accused Social Democratic members were arrested, and the other seven were chased to the frontier. Even the aristocratic Council of the Empire, which had displayed symptoms of uneasiness over the proceedings of the reactionaries, was prorogued until November 13, the day before the time set for the meeting of the new Duma.

It is a curious fact that the particular clash that furnished the pretext for the dissolution could not have happened in the United States, for the reason that our Government could have done without asking what the Russian Government could not do in the absence of permission from the Duma. In the matter of personal inviolability the privileges of members of the Duma were greater than those of members of Congress. The exemption of a member of Congress from arrest does not extend to cases of treason, felony, or breach of the peace. If President Roosevelt had possessed evidence that sixteen Democratic Representatives were conspiring to overthrow the Government he could have had them jailed and prosecuted without even the formality of a special message to the House.

The dissolution of the first Duma might have been represented as merely a return to the post after a false start, but the extinction of the second is the abandonment of the whole race.

There are

to be no more real Parliaments in Russia if the Czar can prevent it. The solemn pledges of October 30, 1905, have been torn up.

and unconstitutional electoral law-the most gigantic gerrymander in history. Every district in Russia. has been carefully remodeled in accordance with its politics as shown by the vote in the last election. Every radical class of voters has been disfranchised or shorn of power, and every reactionary class has been magnified. The workmen have been almost totally excluded from the suffrage, and the peasants, who form nineteen-twentieths of the population of the empire, have been subordinated to the landlords. Poland, the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Siberia have seen their representation cut down to a state of impotence. The nation has been chopped into class segments, and the ignorant classes are no longer to be allowed to select intelligent outsiders to represent them-each class must choose its representatives within its own ranks.

But it is to be remembered that the Czar did not grant the constitution he has just destroyed because he wanted to, but because he had to. The autocracy was on the point of collapse when he prolonged its life by the promises he has now broken. Russia stands to-day where she stood two years ago, but with the added experience of two parliamentary campaigns and the discussions that have carried some political intelligence into every peasant hamlet. When even the Council of the Empire has been penetrated by liberal ideas there is more than a possibility that the gerrymandered third Duma may prove as intractable an instrument of oppression as its predecessors. But whatever the Duma may do the people before whom the Autocrat quailed in October, 1905, still remain.

TH

A RISKY BUSINESS

NOXIOUS JOURNALISM

ON

N June 13 the New York "Times" published a despatch from Tokyo, saying that nothing surprised the Japanese nation more than the persistent attempts of American and European purveyors of sensation to represent that belligerent sentiment against the United States was rising in Japan. It added that such a contingency as the outbreak of war was regarded by all educated Japanese as almost inconceivable," that it was fully and generally recognized that the abnormal conditions in San Francisco were wholly unreflected in America at large, and that the Japanese journals, with insignificant exceptions, scouted the idea of a falling out with the nation's best friends on account of the lawlessness of a few roughs, whose outrages Washington regretted equally with Tokyo.

Immediately following this in the same column came another Tokyo despatch by Associated Press announcing that the "Asahi's" Washington correspondent reported an attack upon a Japanese horticulturist at Berkeley, California. "This," observed the Associated Press representative, "has fanned the flame of indignation already strong here, and has served to confirm the popular belief that violence of the kind is not accidental, but the result of a deeply rooted feeling against the Japanese." Newspapers in Tokyo and Osaka were then quoted, demanding action, by arms or otherwise, to force the United States to respect Japan's rights.

The Berkeley outrage was perpetrated by four fifteen-year-old boys, who threw some stones at a Japanese greenhouse and broke a couple of dozen panes of glass. Hundreds of complaints of similar mischief, it was said, had been made by American sufferers from the savage instincts of the juvenile animal, but this was the first Japanese complaint in a long time. It appears that there must be newspaper correspondents on both sides of the Pacific who make a point of raking the news for causes of irritation. They give us the impression, in this country that Japan is in a state of continual rage over nothing, and they try to make the Japanese believe that the United States is filled with barbarous race hatred. As a matter of fact, we know that there is no race-prejudice against the Japanese in this country at large-quite the contrary and it appears probable that public sentiment in Japan has been misrepresented just as much as ours has been. The correspondents on both sides who have deliberately hunted for irritating material, manufacturing it when it has not been otherwise available, have a heavy responsibility. If every annoyance inflicted by a Californian hoodlum upon a foreigner of any nationality were to become an international complication, it would take a special Hague Conference to keep us out of war with all the world. Some idea of the possibilities that would confront us may be gathered from this little outburst in the San Francisco "News Letter," emitted without thought of the sensitive Japanese:

promise not to alter the electoral law without the consent of the Duma has been broken. There is to be another so-called Duma, but as far as the Government can assure such a result it is not to be a national Parliament, but a subservient council of landlords and functionaries. There is a new

HE Adams Express Company has "cut a melon" of two hundred per cent, dividing among its stockholders new four per cent bonds to the amount of $200 per share. The Adams Express Company is one of the four arguments which John Wanamaker, when Postmaster General, said had been advanced against a parcels post service. The other three were the United States, Wells-Fargo, and American Express Companies. These corporations believe that the business of carrying parcels is too precarious to be undertaken by the Post-Office Department. The Government might lose money on it.

"Is there no way in which to curb the predatory appetite of the Hoodlum Californiensis when it emerges of a Sunday for its weekly foray on the suburbanite? From Oakland to San Leandro it lays the country It is the terror of the hills around Mill Valley, and San Mateo, the beautiful, is not exempt from its baleful attentions. It emerges with a whoop in the morning, and, male and female, it inflicts itself on the land and retires at night with a fighting jag. It is like a swarm of locusts or wasps, and there is no property right that it respects. It breaks tables, chairs, and windows, fills the atmosphere with foulness, muddies the creeks, and generally cumbers the earth. Is it not

about time vigilance committees were appointed to show the straight and narrow path to the Sunday San Franciscan? Hanging two or three in each of the localities named for three or four weeks in succession would not be a bad idea, and would be appreciated as object-lessons."

The Japanese Government appears to realize at last the harm that may be done by reckless and malicious journalism, and on June 13 the newspaper men of Tokyo were summoned before the Home Department and advised to refrain from publishing inflammatory matter about what is amusingly called in that region "the American question." On the 17th the Constitutional Party in Japan passed conciliatory resolutions, the Japanese Press Association of New York deprecated war talk, and despatches from Tokyo asserted that the attempt of the Progressives to make party capital out of the San Francisco affair had fallen flat.

TH

HE first blow of justice in San Francisco has fallen. Mayor Schmitz was convicted on June 13 of extortion and bribery in taking protection money from the proprietors of the disreputable "French restaurants. His political creator and seducer, Boss Ruef, had appeared against him and testified to paying him money. The charge on which the Mayor was tried was one of the minor ones on which the early indictments had been found. It did not touch the great maze of corruption in which the street railroad, gas, and telephone companies are involved. Trials in these cases will come next. After the verdict was rendered Schmitz issued a statement asserting his innocence and declaring that he would carry his case to the highest court. Schmitz was not even allowed to go out on bail pending his appeal, and the country was treated to the curious spectacle of a city of four hundred thousand inhabitants with the head of its government in one of its own jails. The Mayor's counsel had moved for the acceptance of bail on the ground that Schmitz could not perform his official duties while he was a prisoner, but the Court declined to consider this a sufficient reason for leaving him at large. The Supervisors decided, however, that the point was good in the other direction, and as Schmitz could not act as jailbird and Mayor at the same time they removed him from office and let him devote his entire attention to jail. Supervisor Gallagher, who had distributed the corporation bribe money, was made Acting Mayor. That would seem a rather startling outcome of reform, but Gallagher's selection was only temporary, pending the accession of a respectable citizen to the Board and his promotion to the Acting Mayoralty.

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JOVERNOR HUGHES of New York has shown how political dangers crumble before a man who has won the right to be trusted. The New York Legislature, like the Legislatures of a dozen other States, had passed a bill making two cents a mile the maximum rate for passenger fares. Elsewhere the Governors had signed these bills, in obedience to an imagined popular demand-a demand which, as a matter of fact, did not exist to any alarming degree. If such a law could be justified anywhere it certainly could in New York, the first State in the Union in wealth and total population and the fifth in density of settlement. But Governor Hughes promptly vetoed the bill on the ground that its passage had not been "preceded by legislative investigation or suitable inquiry" under the authority of the State, nor "predicated on reports or statistics officially collated which would permit a fair conclusion as to the justice of its operation." He thought that it plainly reflected "dissatisfaction with existing conditions and an effort to provide a remedy through arbitrary action," and that it represented a policy 'seriously mistaken and pregnant with disaster." Mr. Hughes emphasized his conviction that railroads should be subject to strict supervision by the State, which should compel them to perform their duties toward the public. at reasonable rates. 66 'But injustice on the part of railroad corporations toward the public," he added, "does not justify injustice on the part of the State toward the railroad corporations. In dealing with these matters democracy must demonstrate its capacity to act upon deliberation and to deal justly." Governor Hughes did not deny that two cents a mile might be a fair rate, but he held that the Legislature was not in a position to judge, and that the matter was eminently one for the new Public Utilities Commission to settle, after fair investigation.

reflection.

Instead of destroying the Governor's popularity his action raised it to a higher pitch than ever. His action was universally commended. When he visited Columbia University the next day to receive the degree of LL.D., President Butler declared that Governor Hughes had opened a new era in politics by exemplifying the university spirit of open-mindedness and candid weighing of facts as opposed to the lynching spirit that would act without Governor Hughes was practically entered for the Presidential race on this occasion, and the enthusiasm with which the suggestion of his nomination was greeted showed that, in academic circles at least, he would be a formidable candidate. The next day the Wisconsin State Senate, by a vote of 21 to 6, rejected a two-cent fare bill on grounds similar to those taken by Governor Hughes, Wisconsin's Railroad Commission having adopted a 22-cent rate after a long investigation, and in the course of the debate the action of Mr. Hughes was warmly commended. Later Chairman Knapp of the Interstate Commerce Commission commended the position of the Governor as an indication of an approaching era of good feeling between the

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