magic gate of the bourgeoisie this sordid tragedy recurs daily throughout France. Once more the line of cleavage is not so much wealth as manual labor. To toil with one's hands is still accounted servile.

Only from 1830 to 1848 did the bourgeoisie enjoy the full title as well as the substance of power. The king of its choice was but the first of the bourgeois; the masses were not enfranchised. Government was but a police for the protection of property, a fence erected round the Haves to keep out the Have Nots. If wealth be, as we are taught, the reward of foresight, thrift, industry, it deserves power. Only the richest taxpayers had a vote. A régime of privilege? "Not any more," Guizot would answer, "than the rule reserving teaching positions to men holding a degree. If you want power, qualify yourself for it: you are free to do so. Enrichissez-vous! Get rich!"-a piece of advice to which Guizot's enemies have given a sinister twist, but which after all is sound enough. Never was there a better adaptation between the political and the economic doctrines of the country. France was managed like a great corporation, in which only shareholders could elect the directors.

The régime had its faults: the worst was that France was bored. But there are many virtues in that solid, hard-working, educated, legalistic, patriotic bourgeoisie, of which M. Poincaré is the sturdy flower. (This is original: I do not think M. Poincaré has ever been called a flower before.) Mesocracy is not mediocracy. At any rate, the middle class know what they want, because they already have it. Definiteness of purpose makes for efficiency. Rather be ruled by the middle class than by the muddle class.

But manhood suffrage came in 1848. Enormous as it is compared with the ancient privileged orders, the bourgeoisie remains a minority-certainly not twenty per cent of the population. How was it able to retain a practical monopoly of political and administrative power?

The first reason is the force of tradition. Conservative as we undoubtedly are in America, we have none the less, one and all, been uprooted from our native land, and have struck new roots in virgin soil.

It is hard for us to appreciate the age-long habit of subordination, if not always of respect, that the French Revolution has not been able to destroy. Then, although the bourgeoisie is efficiently walled in, although its gates are narrow and the path of approach is steep, still the gates swing open to the pushful, and the path is not impassable. Every man hopes, if he cannot become a bourgeois himself, at least to make his son a bourgeois. Albert Thierry, a workingman's son, proclaimed as his motto: "Le refus de parvenir"-the refusal to leave his class; but he was unique, and he died young. Privileges and even abuses do not seem so intolerable when you nurse a reasonable expectation of profiting by them. The poor man on the road to wealth is already a plutocrat at heart. Hazing is submitted to by the finest young fellows, in spite of its degrading features, because they can anticipate the glorious day when they will be among the hazers and not among the hazed.

Then the majority, the "lower classes," the working classes, the "people" in the antidemocratic sense of the term, do not form a solid and conscious body. The peasants have different interests, and therefore different principles, from the industrial workers. Although they too are socially ostracized by the bourgeoisie, they own their land, and they cast in their lot with the middle class as the defender of property. As France was until quite recently overwhelmingly rural, the alliance between the bourgeoisie and the peasantry against urban democracy would seem to be invincible.

We can now understand how the bourgeoisie, with the help of the peasants, has been able to intrench itself in the one great governmental power in France, the Bureaucracy. The professions—including administrative careers―require a long and costly preparation. Now high school education in France is divided, on social lines, into two main branches: higher primary, commercial, technical, on the one hand, which is given free to all who are fit for it; and secondary education proper, of greater duration, and for which fees are charged. The former is democratic, but does not lead to the professions. The student of a technical school will hardly ever

become an "engineer" in the French sense of the term; he will remain a foreman. Secondary education alone, given in Lycées and Collèges, leads to the Bachelor's and Licenciate's degrees, and to the graduate professional schools. No doubt a number of scholarships are offered to deserving sons of the people: the bourgeoisie has sense enough to aggregate to itself the best elements in the other classes. But these scholars are a minority; they are placed in a bourgeois atmosphere, they are taught bourgeois traditions, and their desire is to break as completely as possible with their origins. One must draw the line somewhere, and the logical place is between one's father and oneself.

The fees and the long period of studies make secondary education almost prohibitive for the masses. Democratic selfsupport of the American type hardly exists at all; and the very strict age limit set for entering the great professional schools makes it impossible for a young man to interrupt his studies, earn some money, and then resume his course. But another and still more effective protection is raised against an influx of democratic elements into the sacred preserves of the bourgeoisie: the professions, for the first few years, do not pay. Hardly any member of a legal profession, hardly any officer in the army or navy, hardly any man in the more promising branches of the civil or diplomatic services, can expect to live on his salary. Young men have to pass difficult examinations and wait until they are thirty to secure a munificent pay of some four hundred dollars.

The "marriage of convenience" is another factor of social stability. In an ancient country like France inherited wealth looms much larger than it does with us: opportunities for making new fortunes are fewer. So a "suitable match" is a recognized step in a young man's career: it is prepared for more sedulously than a university degree. And the trust of inherited wealth, the bourgeoisie, controls the matrimonial market. Even in politics, the bourgeois is supreme. It takes money to be elected, even by honest means, more money than the deputy will receive from the state in the four years of his term. It takes edu

cation-that classical, literary education which, as we have seen, the sons of the people have no fair chance of getting-to be successful in the bourgeois milieu of the Chamber. So the peasants, and even the social-democratic population of the cities, are represented by bourgeois doctors, lawyers, and professors, like Jaurès. But for one Jaurès who remained faithful to the class that had elected him, we find dozens of men who naturally reverted to, or veered toward, the upper class which held the good things of this world and was willing to welcome them. Thus Messrs. Viviani, Briand, Millerand began their political careers as socialists and representatives of workingmen's districts. And we know how completely they have been purged of their youthful errors.

IV

THE problem therefore is not: How does the French bourgeoisie manage to keep democracy down?-but How, under such unfavorable circumstances, did French democracy manage to assert itself at all, to be a power in the land and in the world?

First of all, immediately before and immediately after the great Revolution, the bourgeoisie had to fight against the privileges of the nobility, and in that fight, it was compelled to invoke democratic principles and the support of the people. When the fight was securely won, the bourgeoisie turned round-some as early as 1794, some in 1830, more in 1848. But they could not undo all the mischief they had done: they could not frankly combat the democracy to which they had been rendering lip service. The long struggle between Voltairian free thought and the Catholic Church had the effect of splitting the bourgeoisie into two factions, the more progressive of which had to strike an alliance with the democratic elements. It was the issue of clericalism vs. anticlericalism alone that kept many bourgeois on the liberal side. Without it, we should never have seen such a typical conservative bourgeois as Waldeck-Rousseau heading a Ministry of Republican Defense with the sympathy of the socialists. Anticlericalism is the stock in trade of the bourgeois radicals, their sole raison d'être. Hence the fierceness with which

they are whipping that poor dead horse at the present day.

But another factor has worked in favor of democracy, and counterbalanced to some extent the overwhelming superiority of the bourgeois-peasant alliance: the democrats occupied strategic positions, the great cities, particularly Paris. The working people of Paris were better educated, could come and act together more rapidly, than the peasants and even the provincial bourgeoisie. Over the purely Parisian bourgeoisie they had the superiority of numbers. They were strengthened by many deserters from the upper class, who came to the people either out of idealism or for less worthy reasons. Thanks to the centralization for which the Ancient Régime was striving, which was perfected by Napoleon, an order from Paris would at first be blindly followed by provincial France. This is the secret of the jerky course of French history from 1789 to 1871. Repeatedly, the radical elements congregated in Paris, supported by the Parisian populace, would make a sudden bid for power, and take a bold step toward democracy. The provinces would remain passive for a while, then slowly, irresistibly, the permanent superiority of the bourgeois-peasant alliance would make itself felt. În 1830, 1848, 1871, conservative France "came back," and with increasing rapidity and violence. It may be said that in the Commune insurrection of 1871 democratic Paris finally lost the fight. Since that date a Parisian revolution out of keeping with the temper of the vast conservative classes has become almost unthinkable. Paris has been tamed at last. In 1789 the bourgeoisie got what they wanted-the suppression of all privileges except their own; the peasantry secured what they were craving for-a clear title to the land they had tilled for centuries. So both are now in agreement to keep things as they are, and against their combined strength the industrial workers are powerless.

And such an order of things is not to be despised. France, on the whole, is decently governed and quietly prosperous. The members of the French Parliament are rather better educated than our average Congressman, and they are more brilliant than the average British M. P. They are honest, as deputies go. They are probably less under the thumb of big business than the very gentlemanly members of the House of Commons. Scandals like the Marconi affair, which were politely hushed at Westminster, would have been pitilessly thrashed out at the Palais Bourbon. The French constitution has no damning fault. It does not prevent France from getting the government she deserves-no better, no worse. Once more, the substance of power is not there: it is in the bureaucracy, in the plutocracy, and in the press, those three powers that a modern Montesquieu should study rather than the old-fashioned executive, legislative, and judiciary. Give the women a vote; decentralize; create a genuine system of proportional representation; give ministers a safer and longer tenure of office; have the President elected by an independent college, or by the whole people: all these reforms may be desirable. But, even though all were achieved, you would repeat: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." On the contrary, without any political change at all, a peaceful revolution may take place. With her newly conquered mines, with the development of water-power, with the resources of her colonial empire, France may evolve from a bourgeoispeasant republic to a republic of industrial workers; then new problems will arise, a new temper, and new methods. If such be the case, Parliament will have no choice but to register, clumsily and a little late, the inevitable trend of national life. And our successors may regret, like a vanished Arcadia, the France of RoyerCollard, Casimir-Périer, Guizot, Thiers, Ferry, Waldeck-Rousseau, and Raymond Poincaré.

O fall ill is all too easy, and since no philosopher of any age has maintained that illness is a pleasure-possibly none even that it is a good-no discussion shall take place here of how one may become sick. And here a word of explanation may be interjected. To an active and pleasant American elevator boy who had inquired after the author's well-being, the answer had been made that he had been ill. "Sick you mean?" the boy replied, and the reproof was just. "Sick" is exactly what is meant, and sick and ill are here to be used interchangeably, as they should be in any article in the American language, and if the wretched creature who is an invalid is also freely called a sick man, every one will understand.

"How to be ill" will seem to many a serious and depressing subject, and it cannot be denied that solemn thoughts must come to every one who even for a moment clings on the brink of the abyss which is illuminated by the lambent fires of hell and by the radiance of the Pearly Gates. Death has forever inspired and will continue to inspire the greatest things which men can write. But it has not inspired this article. Indeed its sick men are not to die but to live on and to learn, if they can, to practise that reasoned and beautiful invalidism which is one of the most graceful of the home arts.

These suggestions are written by an expert invalid, at least by one of three years' standing, and if there are any readers who believe there should be a literary lethal chamber to which authors should be led the moment they fall ill, such are quite welcome to their opinion. It is possible that this writer may not have learned all the refinements of his métier of sick man; but he can at least pretend to great interest in the subject, and to no inconsiderable knowledge. To hear of a fellow-victim is

at once to want to know him, in rare cases even to aid him, and this, it is to be supposed, is one of the results of that softening of the heart which, we are so often told, comes with suffering. It means, at any rate, that an interchange of trade secrets has taken place which must make the invalid speak with wider knowledge of the class of sick men.

First, we should discourse of the pleasures, if there are any, of being attacked by disease or decay. It is conceivable that very often the Tired Business Man (who is here used as typical of any American, male or female), that this overworked and hunted creature may at the outset, under the sharp impact of a strange blow, even feel real relief at the surrender of responsibility, at saying in his heart to the doctor and his various nurses, professional and amateur, that he is done with the "carcass" that he is and that he turns it over to them, to bring it back to life or to let it sink into forgetfulness, if they like. This for many may represent the first freedom from care known since growing up. But it can only be indulged in as a pleasure when one is mentally under the spell of the great American Get-Well system and can believe implicitly that all is well and safe so long as one has a good doctor and a good trained nurse. Later one may gradually come to doubt whether there is such a thing as a good doctor or a really trained nurse. But for the time being here is safety.

It may gradually be borne in upon the sick man's mind that this perfectly functioning American system is not primarily meant for him, but for others. The idea of caring for him is not altogether his safety, but that of those around him-the peace and security of sorrowing hearts, watching his bedside, which otherwise would find great difficulty in attending to business or doing their Christmas shopping. An invalid must never forget to think of the happiness of others. The whole body of doctors, although it owes

its very existence to the presence in the world of illness, is enormously invigorated by there being a body of beings abjectly dependent on them and trusting in them. As for the profession of nursing, enough can never be said for the suffering human beings who have created the need for these fine, independent, hard, self-supporting women, who help to heal us at so much per day. Even sick folk must try to be reasonable and to understand why a good season for the nurse means one in which there are many pneumonia cases which, although they mean hard work, mean also quick and decisive results for better or for worse. The activities of both doctors and nurses are on the whole benign, and the ten per cent commission which until lately undertakers used to pay nurses, has gone out almost everywhere over the country.

To attack doctors and nurses is a favorite relaxation of the invalid mind, but it should be remembered that both classes have a monstrous tale to tell of the irritability and lack of decent consideration on our part; and that it is as well to remind ourselves occasionally that even a sick man may still be a gentleman. With all the irritability which is often felt at both doctors and nurses one can also have moments of being justifiably glad that the whole thing can be upon a basis of pay

ment.

A well-known man of letters was once heard threatening never again to go to his dentist, because this practitioner had had "the impertinence" to charge him less than the rich who "brought their fangs" to be filled with gold. The author was, however, so many may think, merely receiving one of the just prerequisites of fame, and many physicians, we know, feel strongly that they would be glad to be "socialized," that is, to be paid a living wage by the government for serving alike rich and poor. Invalids will sympathize often with such doctors; for there comes a time when it seems to a sick man just a little ill-bred to be too much interested in oneself, and when, in consequence, he is glad to feel under no obligation to doctor or nurse which cannot be discharged on a financial basis, as it so often only too evidently can. It seems to do away with sentimentality. Doctors, it must also be

remembered, live nowadays in a not wholly friendly world. There are so many new cults which profess to make well in other than material ways that the physician must feel that, the moment his back is turned, some one will "jump out" at his charge and attack the whole science of medicine. The sick man can possibly well afford to be sorry for his doctor.

The ill know, better than any one, how distressing it can be, and how really sapping of courage, to have too many people sorry for them. At these moments the invalid can never be too grateful for the so neatly invented and so impersonal name by which he is known-the patient! Since at least the eighteenth century we impatients have been called patients, and the word has emphasized the cool aloofness in which we are placed, so that there may be no sentimentalizing over us. One can even learn to feel a certain pride of race in those of us so prostrate as to be carried to and fro; we are what are technically known to trained nurses as "stretcher-patients."

A well-known arthritic says with a certain bitter air of pleasure that he has given incredible comfort to many of his fellowsufferers from the same disease by being absolutely the worst case on record, so much worse even than any one of them is. After all, the lesson which sickness should teach is the old one, not to think of ourselves too much, but to live for the good of others. Females in good health particularly are notoriously made of a softer and more lovely character by the suffering of men under their control, made to glow too with a new color and strength. The demand upon their responsibility brings self-respect; and pity, inspired by those of the once stronger sex, makes their bloom softer. It cannot be too strongly said that if all women would only keep patients as pets, their own sweetness and beauty would be increased manifold. It has become the writer's custom of late to advise all working women with whom he comes in contact, such as chambermaids, laundresses, and so forth, never to marry unless they can get invalids as husbands. The almost universal fear seems to be that a sick man would not be able to earn "good money"; but when the economic independence of woman has finally