of San Stefano at the Berlin Congress, and brought back "Peace with honor" (?), England solemnly guaranteed Turkish reforms in the government of Asia Minor; yet, with Cyprus in her pocket, she remained stoically apathetic during the late massacres of Armenians. To usurp gold-bearing territory, she refused to confirm or arbitrate the boundary of Venezuela, which had previously been agreed upon, and the same cause to-day leads her to approve Jameson's raid in South Africa, and to assemble a fleet in Delagoa Bay, in violation of the comity of nations. To gratify a few Canadian poachers, she persistently refrains from uniting with us in measures under the Paris Arbitration for the preservation of seal life in the Pacific. Having, Delilah-like, shorn Greece of her defensive strength (see "Betrayal of Greece" in to-day's daily "Tribune "), she seized Egypt, and now, hoping to secure Crete and other Turkish possessions, she aids the Turk in strangling the Christian Greek, while wearing the garb of neutrality. If the rulers of Christian England should ever prove their faith in Christianity by adopting the Golden Rule as a basis for their diplomacy, this hatred on the part of the United States would disappear like snow under an April sun, and our hearts and hands would join theirs in the bonds of loving and perpetual brotherhood. KNICKERBOCKER. [Our correspondent's letter is a clear exposition of two facts: first, that there are some very black spots on England's governmental record, and, second, that these spots so interfere with the vision of many Americans that they cannot read the history of England without resentment. Now, no one denies the existence of the spots, but the spectacle of the United States declining to maintain a speaking acquaintance with Great Britain because Great Britain does not adopt the Golden Rule as a basis of government is, to say the best, amusing. It is true, in spite of all the civilization which England has carried to India, China, and Egypt, that her treatment of the natives of those countries brings the blush of indignation to the honest American cheek-a blush, however, which recedes as rapidly as it came when the honest American remembers our own treatment of the Mexicans in Texas, the Spanish in California, the negroes in the South, and the Indians on our Western frontier. The fact is that there is too much glass in our own house to make it safe for us to throw stones at England, and the least we can do is to consider whether some of the spots which annoy us in reading English history would not disappear from our vision if we should remove the motes, to say nothing of the beams, which are in our own eyes. It is time to forget the resentments of childhood and act like men. We all need forbearance and forgiveness.-THE EDITORS.] But What of the Beams in Our Eyes? To the Editors of The Outlook: In concluding your editorial in The Outlook of April 24 on the terrible sanitary conditions prevailing in Bombay, apropos of a letter in the New York "Nation" and a citation therefrom exhibiting some of the horrible details, you say: "And this is the civilization that represents so many centuries of religious training under those Buddhist and Mohammedan creeds which of late have seen fit to send missionaries to the Western world!" The writer of the sentence just quoted must have been thoughtless or blind or very unfair. For a moment's reflection would have shown bim that almost the same thing can be exclaimed against our national and time-honored practice of sending missionaries to Asia, Africa, and elsewhere to convert the unregenerate of those countries, when religious, moral, industrial, and political condi tions exist here in our own country that throw a fearful glare of irony over our missionary expendi. tures and enterprises. Your writer must have been forgetful, since there has been a frightful abundance of odious facts and disgraceful condi tions staring us in the face in these recent years, and many a one has asked himself where the sense lay in our expending millions of dollars and jeopardizing hundreds of lives trying to convert the "heathen" to Christianity, when our own yards, especially our back yards, have been in such a state. One wonders that he could see the motes in his poor lost neighbors' eyes, the beams in his own are so large. The hideous poverty of East End, London; the squalor and filth of the congested tenement-house districts of New York; the sweat-shops of Chicago and New York; the filthy, unsanitary conditions of Baltimore, Md., with its nauseating overground sewerage, and the unsanitary condition of all American cities, until perhaps recently; the hundreds of deaths that resulted from cholera n Europe in 1892, especially in Hamburg, because of the foul and filthy drainage of that German city and of other localities; the but recent eradication and prevention of smallpox and yellow fever in American cities; the degradation, oppression, and pitiable superstition that prevail among the negroes of the South; the misery and ignorance that one encounters in the mining regions of Pennsylvania and the South; the notorious national disgrace of the United States, the "lynchings" throughout the Southern and Southwestern States, and their frequent occurrence in the Northern States; the prize-fights at New Or leans, and the late carnival of brutes at Carson City, where the Governor and his staff and the chivalry of the city attended, and concerning which the newspapers of the country almost universally debauched the public by minute "realistic" descriptions of the saturnalia from the pens of ex-United States Senators and other celebrities; the cities and many States of America throttled by rings and bosses, such as Platt, Quay, Madden, Croker, Gorman, and their servile tools who "work" our municipalities for sordid private ends-these things in this Western world, in free and enlightened America, after centuries of Christian and Protestant training, with our heritage of Anglo-Saxon traditions of law, liberty, and fraternity, and at the end of this wonderful nineteenth century, too, despite the work of thousands of preachers and churches and social reformers! Yet" we "have always "seen fit " to send missionaries to Asia and Africa! Considering our "advanced" civilization and Christian nurture, and arguing from a similarity in premises and by parity of reasoning, do not our mighty efforts and expenditures in foreign missions amount to prodigious impudence, if the inconsistency of the feeble and intermittent attempts of Buddhists at proselytism in our Western world, with the prevalence of such deplorable conditions in India, is worthy your exclamation and irony? Des Moines, Iowa. F. I. H. [These are not the fruits of Christianity, but exist in spite of it; they are not the fruits of Americanism (if we except the lynchings), but the results of immigration-that is, are importations from the Old World. Brahmanism maintains caste; Christianity has abolished slavery. Brahmanism forbids the education of the child widow; Christianity has made woman free. Religion forbids cleanliness in India, promotes and compels it in New York.-THE EDITORS.] Dr. Martineau's Unitarianism To the Editors of The Outlook: In a note to Mr. Chadwick's letter in your issue of May 29 you are further from the truth than you think. You flatly deny that Dr. Martineau is by affiliation a Unitarian. Your words are. "Neither does he belong to the Unitarian body." The Christian World" (London) of April 22 made precisely the same claim, with probably the same horror that you evince that such a noble man should be a Unitarian. To this W. Copeland Bowie, Secretary of the "British and Foreign Unitarian Association," replied in the following words: "Dr. Martineau has never refused to classify himself as a Unitarian. He has always objected to labeling churches with the Unitarian name, and a very large number of leading Unitarians agree with him on this point. It may interest your readers to know that Dr. Martineau has been a member of the British and Foreign Unitarian Association for a great many years; he preached the annual sermon in 1834, and again in 1869; and he continues to subscribe and take a warm interest in its affairs. He is also the. beloved and trusted leader, counselor, and friend of Unitarian ministers and laymen throughout the whole country." It is strange that a paper like The Outlook, while teaching in many ways essentially Unitarian error. It is not often one can hope to catch the editor of The Outlook napping, but for once he is in In your last issue it was casually stated, in answer to a correspondent, that the late greatly beloved Henry Drummond occupied a chair in Glasgow University. This is an error, indeed, common to a large section of the American press. It is an error all the same. Professor Drummond occupied the chair of "Natural Science" in the Glasgow College of the Free Church, a Presbyterian denomination having no connection with the State Church. The "chair" was founded with a view to its being occupied by Professor Drummond, and its continuance is being much canvassed. Of course the college was a theological seminary, and its students candidates for the Christian pulpit. (Rev.) J. McA. INSPIRATION. While one sees but few aspects of eternal truth, and those mainly as adapted to his own time, another's vision is comprehensive, seeing the truth on many sides, and in its naked, eternal form. It has been a great good fortune to the Christian Church that the canon of the Scriptures has recognized this, and that we consequently have in the Bible books inspiring and inspired, which yet vary in their degrees of inspiration; books differing as widely as Ecclesiastes and the Gospel of St. John. The lower degree of inspiration, local and temporary as it may be, may yet claim to be the instrument of revelation. For inspiration is not infallibility. God the inspiring Spirit can dwell with partial knowledge, just as God the sanctifying Spirit can dwell with partial holiness; for if he could not so dwell with men, he could not dwell with them at all.-Rev. Frederic Palmer. Notes and Queries NOTE TO CORRESPONDENTS.-It is seldom possible to answer any inquiry in the next issue after its receipt. Those who find expected answers late in coming will, we hope, bear in mind the impediments arising from the constant pressure of many subjects upon our limited space. Communications should always bear the writer's name and address. Would it not be of interest to many readers just now, when so much interest centers in Europe, if The Outlook would give the relationship of the royal family of England with the other royal houses of Europe, brought about by intermarriage? Also those of the family of King Christian. M. F. K. Queen Victoria is the daughter of the late Ed'ward, Duke of Kent (fourth son of George III.), and of Princess Victoria of Saxe-Saalfield-Coburg. The Queen was married in 1840 to Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, by whom she had nine children: (1) The eldest was the Princess Royal, Victoria, who married the late Frederick III. of Germany, and is known as the Empress Frederick. Their children are the present Emperor of Germany, William II.; Prince Henry; Princess Charlotte, now the Hereditary Princess of Saxe-Meiningen; Princess Victoria, now Princess Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe; Princess Sophie, now the Crown Princess of Greece; Princess Margaret, now Princess Frederick Charles of Hesse. (2) Queen Victoria's oldest son is Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, who married Princess Alexandra, eldest daughter of King Christian IX. of Denmark. Their children were the late Prince Albert Victor; Prince George (who married Princess Victoria Mary, daughter of the Duke of Teck); Princess Louise (who married the Duke of Fife); Princess Victoria (unmarried); and Princess Maud, who has recently married Prince Karl of Denmark. (3) Queen Victoria's next daughter was Princess Alice, who married the late Grand Duke of Hesse. Their children are Princess Louis of Battenberg; the Grand Duchess Sergius of Russia; Princess Henry of Germany; the present Empress of Russia, and the present Grand Duke of Hesse. (4) Queen Victoria's second son was Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, now the Duke of SaxeCoburg-Gotha. He married the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia, only daughter of the late Emperor Alexander II. Their children are: Prince Alfred; Princess Marie, now the Crown Princess of Rumania; Princess Victoria, now the Grand Duchess of Hesse; Princess Alexandra, now the Hereditary Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg; and Princess Beatrice. (5) Queen Victoria's third daughter was Princess Helena, who married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. Their children are Prince Christian, Prince Albert, Princess Victoria, and Princess Louise. The last named is now Princess Aribert of Anhalt. (6) Queen Victoria's next daughter was Princess Louise, who married the Marquis of Lorne, eldest son of the Duke of Argyll. (7) Queen Victoria's third son was Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, who married Princess Louise of Prussia. (8) The fourth son was the late Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. (9) Queen Victoria's last child was Princess Beatrice, who married the late Prince Henry of Battenberg. Christian IX., King of Denmark, married Louise, daughter of the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. Their children are: (1) Crown Prince Frederik, who married Princess Lowisa of Sweden and Norway (their son Karl is now the husband of Princess Maud of Great Britain). (2) Princess Alexandra, now the Princess of Wales, mother of Princess Maud. (3) Prince Wilhelm, in 1863 elected King of Greece under the title George I. (4) Princess Dagmar, who became Empress of Russia under the title Marie-Feodorovna. (5) Princess Thyra, now the Duchess of Cumber. land; and (6) Prince Waldemar, who married Princess Marie of Orleans, daughter of the Duc de Chartres. 1. Can you give me some of the advantages in reading from Professor Moulton's Bible? 2. I think it is rather difficult to trace the history of the Hebrew race from reading our Bible. Has the Modern Reader's Bible, by a change of the order of certain passages, made the history of the Hebrew race any clearer? O. B. F. What Professor Moulton has done is to arrange the contents of the several books in literary form according to modern ideas of it. For instance, in a historical book where matter appropriate to foot-notes and appendix is mingled by the ancient writer with the text, a modern writer keeps it separate. The advantage of using the Modern Reader's Bible it is that it in a form appropriate to its character as literature. This is best appreciated by literary people. But it was not intended to make the general course of Hebrew history any clearer. I am a little girl ten years old, and have been very much interested in the unpardonable sin. I have read your answer in The Outlook of May 15, but what does speaking a word against the Holy Ghost mean? Will you please explain the 32d verse of the 12th chapter of St. Matthew? I shall be ever and ever so much obliged to you. A. P. It is hard to explain to you, because it is a sin that no young person ever did or could commit. It may be partly explained by a comparison. If a man should put out his eyes, he could not see, nothing could make him see. So if a man by obstinate wickedness should destroy his power of believing in God's forgiveness, he would be in a hopeless state. Though God would still be gracious, the man could not see it, and so could not take God's forgiveness to himself. Last year, about this time, some lady, whose name I do not recall, asked. in the Notes and Queries column of The Outlook, if any one still had the old-fashioned cinnamon roses. I meant to tell her then that I had several bushes that had gladdened my heart ever since I was born. Now they are full of buds, in spite of rain and cold. Perhaps she still cares to have her query answered, and her eye might light on this. So I send it. E. W. C. A Surprise By Mary Chase Thurlow On a corner select, in a woody retreat, An aster once lifted her head, And humbly near by, quite close to her feet, A mushroom her parasol spread. monarch of the poultry-yard. A handsome and lordly fellow he was, too, and well worthy of his name, as he proved. One day he came strutting along followed by his meek wife and ten beautiful fluffy turkey babies. The sight was one calculated to fill a turkey father's heart with joy. A home was "Dear me !" and the aster fanned slowly her leaf, quickly improvised, and Andromache and her "Such an upstart I never have met ! To be rid of this neighbor would be a relief; "To one born to the purple, whose nerves are not strong, Her proximity comes like a blow; My family's been here really too long Such low-born acquaintance to know." She shook out ber fringes, and said with a sigh, 'Twas not long ere a party of merry young maids Came loaded with flowers and fruits; "How lovely!" cried one, and ran through the glades To kneel at the proud aster's roots. Then the flower raised grandly her tall purple head, Quite conscious of earning the praise; But no! From her humble and low mossy bed The mushroom they tenderly raise. "Delicious for tea!" aster hears as they go, Then remarks to a neighboring rose, "The tastes of some people are really too low!" And turns up her petal-like nose. A moral? Of course, but exceedingly old; 'Twould surely offend you to have it retold. Hector and His Family By M. B. Curtis A few years ago, when living in a State in the northwest corner of the United States, we bought a pair of fine bronze turkeys-thoroughbreds. We named them Hector and Andromache; the names perhaps may account for Hector's deeds. Needless to say, they were a very devoted couple. In due time Andromache laid some nice eggs; the first were given to an old hen, and about the time these were hatched Andromache concluded to have a family of her own. Slyly hiding her nest in an old brush-pile, she laid some beautiful eggs, and for some time it was thought she had been carried off to furnish a lunch for some swell set of coyotes. Hector, however, serenely strutted and gobbled, and was acknowledged lord and babies established in it. The home was a large dry-goods box, with slats nailed across the front. Alas! one night, about a week after occupying this home, a hungry coyote prowled that way, and tearing a slat from the box, in sight of Hector, the devoted husband and father, he quickly seized and ate nine of the babies, and, throwing Andromache over his shoulder, he silently trotted away. In the morning we gazed on a pitiful sight-a desolate home, and Hector, the gallant father, hovering his one remaining child and protecting it from the rain and cold. He faithfully devoted his whole time to caring for his motherless child, entirely forgetting his former occupation of strutting; nor did he once strut again till the wee turkey was large enough to fly up to roost. When the hen who hatched out the first turkey brood left them to shift for themselves, Hector adopted them, and for weeks faithfully scratched for them or hunted bugs from morn till night. At night his broad wings protected them from the cold. When the six adopted children were large enough to fly up to roost, Hector flew up with them, and, taking the small turks on each side of him, he carefully spread his broad wings over them, his own wee child meantime mournfully crying in the corner till some one came to tuck him up beside his brothers and sisters. Hector lived to a good old turkey age, finally resuming his former strutting ways, and ended his days as is usual with turkeys. About Letters When you write a letter and put a postagestamp on it, you pay the Government two cents, or five cents, or one cent, as the case may be, to take your letter to foreign countries, or to this country, or just to deliver a circular. Did you ever think how much labor must be done to get that letter to its destination? First, there is the making of the postage-stamp, and this employs artists, who must draw the designs; paper-makers, who must make the paper on which the design is to be printed; printers, gum arabic makers, and the men to attend the machine that applies just the right quantity of gum arabic to the back of the stamp. Then the stamps must be counted, so that the Government may know how many it has to sell. Then there must be bookkeeping ac counts kept, all because this little postage-stamp is something that the Government is to sell; then there must be the clerk to sell it. After the stamp is on the letter it must be carried to the post-office, or, if you live in the city, it must be carried to the lamp-post. Then a man must be hired and paid by the Government to take your letter from wherever you have put it, and he must see that it goes into a mail-bag and is delivered at the train which is to carry it to the post-office, or the place to which you wish it sent. Then the mail-bag must be carried from the train to the post-office. On the train the Government has men who sort out your letter from others that are to be sent to other places, and inclose your letter in the mail-bag which will take it to the office from which it must be distributed. Here another man must be employed to sort out these letters, and if you live in the country he must put them in your mail-box; if in the city, it must be put where the mail-carrier of your district will get it. Now, the Government does not own the railroads, so the Government must pay for the transportation of your letter, and the plan adopted by the Government and the railroad is to send your letter by weight. Neither the Government nor the railroads could afford, for the price that you pay, to weigh each letter separately, and some plan must be adopted which will be fair to the Government and fair to the railroads. In one division of the Postal Railway Service in this country there are one hundred and seventyfive railroads. This weighing is done every four years. All the mail matter sent over each road in one day is weighed, and this weight of the whole matter for a day fixes the price the Government is to pay. The Government pays $42.75 a year to a railroad that carries 200 pounds a mile daily; the road carrying 5,000 pounds daily receives $1.75 a year for each mile over which it carries that amount of mail matter. The next time that you put a postage-stamp on a letter you will probably think a little of all the employment that its making and use involve. Sparrows' Home-Making The sparrows who have to build nests in cities have to work very much harder to gather the material together of which bird-houses are made, than do the birds in the country. Recently a handful of cot'on was dropped on the sidewalk near the City Hall. One sparrow flew down quickly from a near-by tree. She seemed to know at once that she had found the thing for which she had been looking. She pecked at the bunch until she had quite a little tuft, when she flew away. Whether she told of her discovery, or whether other sparrows had seen her, one cannot be certain, but she had hardly disappeared when two sparrows flew down, and after much chattering they, too, flew in the air with the little tufts for the nest. Those three sparrows flew back and forth until there was but a tiny bit of the cotton left in the street. They worked until they had all the material needed for their nests. Would it not be a good idea in nest-building time for the children in cities to provide nest building material? The Elephant's Introduction Recently in New York an elephant was to be taken to her new home in Central Park. She was taken from the train, and had gone but a short distance when she absolutely refused to take another step. Now, you can imagine that a great big elephant in the streets of New York who refused to move either forward or backward presented a very serious question to those who had her in charge. Suddenly one of the men thought that probably the elephant was distrust. ful of what was to be done with her, and the best thing to do would be to bring another elephant from the Park. This was done. As soon as the new elephant was chained to the old resident of Central Park she evinced every desire to accompany her friend to the new home. Perhaps the elephant was homesick in New York, with its clanging car-bells and its rattle of carts, and thought herself the only one of her kind in the city; but when she saw another elephant she knew that at least she would have one compan ion, or perhaps in elephant language the old resi dent made her understand the delights of life in Central Park. Some Grasshoppers When you see a grasshopper hopping through the grass, it probably would not occur to you that a grasshopper anywhere could be so interesting, or the study of the grasshopper so valuable, that sums of money would be paid to the man who knew and understood grasshopper nature. Down in one of the South American republics they have been having a grasshopper plague that has dev astated the farms for the past ten years--that is, that has destroyed a great deal of what the farm ers of that country have attempted to raise; and now money enough has been appropriated by that government to send to one of the universities of this country for a man who knows all about grasshoppers, and who is hired by this South Ameri can Government to go down and study this destructive grasshopper, and tell the people how they can save their crops by destroying or driv ing out this particular kind of grasshopper. The Clock and Jack 'Why is it that I'm like the clock?" Says little Jack to me. "Because I've two hands and a face, As any one can see." The difference 'twixt the clock and Jack Is quite as plainly seen (I wish they were alike in this): Its face and hands are clean. -Youth's Companion. |