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In the matter of cures the relations of cause and effect are extremely obscure. Cures are being wrought all the time by bogus remedies and by the intervention of means and objects for which neither sanctity nor intrinsic virtue of any sort can reasonably be claimed. Patent medicines often make cures,

but it is a disputed question whether the curative agent is

put into the bottle or into the wrapper that comes around it. Faith is a prodigious healer, and it seems to work very much the same whether it is excited by the exhibition of a relic in a church or the publication of testimonials in a newspaper. A bogus relic may make real cures, and a genuine relic of good quality may fail to make them. The cures prove nothing about the relic one way or the other. What they do prove relates to man, and bears in an interesting manner upon the question whether he is physically the real stuff, or merely a figment of the imagination. There is no doubt at all that ailments of the realest kind can be cured and are constantly being cured by imaginary remedies. The great prop of realism in the cure business is that the imagi

nary remedies are mighty uncertain; more uncertain even than the real remedies, and that is saying a good deal.

HE size of the difficulty now prevailing in Wyoming seems to be that the cattlemen have property that the Rustlers, have use for, and that the Rustlers, lacking the means to gain possession of the cattlemen's property by purchase or exchange, have formed the habit of appro

priating it without the inter

vention of any of the formalities of trade. This habit the cattlemen have sought to correct by the only means open to them, with the result that some forty of them are in charge of the military authorities at Fort Russell, charged with murder. But it seems further, that in the counties of Wyoming where there has been most trouble the administration of justice is in the hands of the Rustlers, who are most anxious to have the imprisoned cattlemen turned over to them for trial. Many of the cattlemen being very well-known in the East as worthy gentlemen who never seemed to need hanging, it is ardently hoped that Uncle Sam, who has them in charge just now, will make it his business to see that they get fair play. If he could find a means to go a step farther and make property in Wyoming safe, honest men would hardly feel that he had thrust himself forward unduly.

*

THE Dean of Gloucester (England) is immensely elated

at the discovery of the remains of Osric, King of Northumbria, in a shrine in his cathedral. Osric was buried in 729, and being the oldest known remains of a Saxon King in England, his discovery has gladdened the Dean like a development of aces at the opening of a jack pot. Inasmuch as it adds enormously to the interest of cathedrals that have the right sort of remains preserved in them, it is to be hoped that due and timely provision will be made to insure this attractive feature to the cathedral of St. John the Divine.

The New Minister: I HOPE YOU PRAY EVERY DAY TO BE BETTER?

The Belle: O, DEAR ME, NO. I AM SO GOOD NOW I'M A BORE

TO MY FRIENDS.

"FROM THE ANTIQUE."

PROTECTED.

Billy: JIMMY, WHAT'S DE COP A'FOLLERIN' YER FOR? IS HE A'SHADDERIN' YER?

Jimmy: DON'T YER READ DER PAPERS ? DON'T YER KNOW DAT GOULD, WANDERBILT AN' ASTOR AN' ALL DE REST OF US FELLERS HAS TO HIRE A DETECTIVE TO FOLLER US AROUND? YER SEE I NEVER TRAVELS WID LESS DAN TEN CENTS IN MY POCKET AN' I KNOW WHAT DIS NEIGHBORHOOD IS! SEE?

SHE

DICTATED.

HE was a sweet young girl. She knew that he had come to propose, and therefore she was very careful to act as though she did not know it.

He was a very matter of fact man who had made his money by getting the best of other people whenever he could in business, and he had certain fixed habits and a tendency towards preoccupation. Upon discovering himself alone in a room with a sweet young girl, he thought himself in his office with his type-writer. Nevertheless he had put off getting the better of another man in order to call and propose, and he knew that he intended to propose right there. This is how he did it :

AMB

Chip

Miss Nellie Setemup (comma) 185 Gladison Avenue (comma) New York (period) (Drop a line) My Dear Miss Gladison (colon) (Drop another line and begin twenty spaces from the left hand margin) I have the honor to propose a matrimonial alliance between our two families (period) (Read that over again please that will do-now again) Inasmuch as you are the only unmarried member of your family and I of mine I guess we are elected (period) Is it a go (question mark) (Drop a line) Yours truly (comma) John Smith (period)"

The sweet young girl declined Mr. Smith.

THE MARK OF CAIN.-Cain, his X mark

A FEMININE PARADOX.

MR.

R. HAMILTON AÏDÉ is a clever man who has been writing prose and verse with careful finish for thirty years. Of course by this time he has learned the mechanism of the art, and that is why one may read his novel of American Society which he calls "A Voyage of Discovery" (Harper's) with something like mild pleasure. It has about it the air of a man of the world whose first law of conduct is not to bore any one, even a "gentle reader." So in this story he flits from flower to flower gayly, and dusts the pollen from his wings as he flies. It is not real gold or sunshine, but it is bright, and suggests the flowerwhich in this metaphor must be understood to be American Society.

Mr. Aïdé shows a strong determination to approve of the flower, and disapprove of the soil from which it grows. Of course to him "American Society" is a score or more of fine houses owned by the people who make a business of entertaining "lions" in half a dozen cities. They are agreeable people, and Mr. Aïdé, no doubt, had a beautiful time. Besides that he saw Carmencita dance in a New York studio, visited Harvard College, rode in a private car across part of the continent, and took the famous Seventeen-mile drive at Monterey. He also met some disagreeable people on the steamer, and railway, and in hotels. Everybody does, in every country-for the world is full of them.

N the story, an English baronet and his sister make this "Voyage of Discovery" (instead of Mr. Aïdé) and they talk pleasantly about it to their American friends, and write letters home that are a little more plain-spoken. They have a complication of love affairs also, which adds to the interest of the baronet's search for profitable investments. He might have had the only daughter of an irreproachable New York swell for the asking, but chose, instead, the daughter of a Pittsburgh millionaire, who is not sure, even on the last page of the story, that she wants him. The father of the girl shows a decided preference for a real American husband who is brought up in the creed of Protection, with a touch of Calvinism in his breeding. That is the only kind of a man who can be trusted with a fortune made in Pennsylvania.

The baronet's sister Grace is, however, the central figure of the story. Before this rather uncomfortably outspoken spinster the young men of America surrender their hearts and lives in a most un-American fashion. Her victims are a Harvard professor, a cynical and cultured man of the world who is about to obtain a divorce, and a very rich young man of the type which is supposed to grow in greater abundance in New York than elsewhere. The first dies of heart-break and an over-devotion to study, which it superinduces. (No modern professor at Harvard would take either love or learning so seriously. Mr. Aïdé has been misinformed about the Harvard "attitude toward life.") The second victim swears that henceforth life is nothing more to him than a broken stick. And the third takes it all very amiably, and goes along bragging of his wealth and friends, and flirting.

Longmans,

Nada the Lily. By H. Rider Haggard. New York: Green and Company.

A Tale of a Lonely Parish. By F. Marion Crawford. London and New York: Macmillan and Company.

Don Branlio. By Juan Valera. New York: D. Appleton and Company. The Test Pronouncer. By William Henry P. Phyfe. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Dreams and Days. By George Parsons Lathrop. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

A Window in Thrums. By J. M. Barrie. New York: Cassell Publishing Company.

A Too Short Vacation. By Lucy Langdon Williams and Emma V. McLoughlin. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company.

Flower of the Vine. By William Sharp. New York: Charles L. Webster and Company.