"If there isn't Mac, himself!" exclaimed Tommy.

"And Robb and Johnny and Luke with him!" gasped Hunter.

The three men looked up and nodded. Johnny Mellin bestowed a furtive wink and smile on the astonished Hunter, who barely noticed him, for Fitzmaurice had asked:

66

How about the strike?" And the Alderman had answered: "Oh, the strike's off, I guess. Good morning, Mr. Lossing. While you're talking to Mr. Hollister, I want a word with Mr. Fitzmaurice and Mr. Hunter; I guess he and I will agree on this business, though we don't always. Hey, Mr. Hunter?"

Billy colored and choked. But he was spared necessity for reply, since the Alderman (towards whom he now felt a veneration similar to that expressed by the young Russian) had rested one foot on the hub of the wheel and was explaining the morning events to Tommy Fitzmaurice with much relish.

"I heard something down town last night that made me open my eyes. The idea of their cooking up such a thing when my back was turned! Well, I didn't lose no time. I went straight to Hollister and saw how he felt; he knew I would give him straight goods and treated me nice, and I got him to promise to see the committee, Robb and all”

"I may not be an honest man, ," said Tommy, quietly; " but if you let me, I'll go with you. I can't help it if I didn't find Mac." he winked the eye furthest from Billy Harry gave his friend a gleam of his blue slowly at the young man on the front seat; eyes, which missed fire, however, for Tommy and Tommy nodded gravely, to imply that was scowling at the off horse's head. They he appreciated how far gratified vanity might drove along the wide street lined on either work with a young labor leader "then, I side by one and two story houses, many of saw Wigger"-this time Billy was included them freshly painted, all with their little in the wink, and the elbow on the cushion gardens. The windows, in general, had rail moved a hand suggestively in the moldwhite lace curtains to one side. You could er's direction-"I guess we all understand see that the families in the Eighth Ward what Luke wants, he wants to be greased! kept a parlor. There were few people on And I guess, if the truth was known, he's the streets. The plain church, with the pretty near the bottom of this trouble. gleaming red walls and white spire that bore Robb is ambitious and young, and wants to aloft the symbol of sacrifice and peace, sent make a name for himself, and goes off at forth a single peal of bells. Tommy, half half cock, but he's honest as the sun. But unconsciously, bent his head and crossed Luke Wigger went into this hoping to git himself. He looked up, and saw the grim his job back-that's Luke or to git money walls of the great foundry where Hollister if he couldn't. You got to bluff him or you meant to run his own business. The smallest of the doors opened, through which four men emerged in a huddle. One of them swung the door half open again, for a parting speech. He was a portly man, still young, with black curls that shone in the sun. He wore a dazzling spring suit of gray flannel and a scarlet tie, and one large, white hand swung a gold-headed cane.

got to buy him. Hollister wouldn't buy him, so, seeing I know a thing or two about brother Wigger, I bluffed him. Never mind how! His only chance to git any kind of a job is from us, and we've got him. Then I told Robb, Johnny Mellin and I, or you can put it, Johnny told Robb and I, the real state of things; and I added a little; and we went to the office, The old man saw us.

When

Harry laughed, and said something about popular. If we fellows would study some of being glad to work with McGinnis that day the machine methods, without dropping any himself; and paid him a neat compliment of our principles, either, we mightn't find with an ingenuous flush on his own young election such a blamed cold day." cheeks. Then, in turn, he held out his hand.

"Oh, that's all right," said McGinnis, looking rather surprised. It was several years before he understood entirely all that simple gesture meant from young Lossing. "Well, I see Father Mahan down the street, and I must git him ayfter the boys. See you later, gentlemen."

Billy's eyes followed him across the macadam. "He's a good man!" sighed Billy from the depths of a grateful heart.

Tommy did not return the expected smile. "I've been thinking, too," said Thomas Fitzmaurice; "if it's right for him to sacrifice his own interests and risk his popularity for the good of the ward, why isn't it right to do as much and sacrifice the interests of the ward, too, if necessary, for the good of the whole town?"

"But that's municipal good government. That's reform!"

"Oh, Lord! I guess I'll have to go for it!" groaned Tommy.

"I think, myself, the recording angel can And thus, in one Sunday morning, did afford to do considerable blotting for Michael Alderman Michael McGinnis lose a good McGinnis on account of this day's work," office, avert a strike, and unconsciously plant says Harry. "He has a conscience, after the seed that was to convert the brightest all. And, Tom, I've been thinking this of his machine politicians, slowly but surely, morning. I begin to see why Mac is so into a reformer.

AMERICA REVISITED IN WAR TIME.

BY HENRY NORMAN.

EDITOR'S NOTE.-Mr. Henry Norman is well known as an English traveler, author, and journalist. After courses of study in France and Germany, he chose Harvard for his university, and graduated there in 1881. His special field of work as author and journalist is foreign politics, and he may generally be looked for where any question of international diplomacy grows acute. This brought him to Washington immediately after President Cleveland's Venezuela message, and the abandonment of the "Schomburgk Line" as the special point in the British demand was due in large part to the official documents of half a century previous which Mr. Norman secured in Washington and cabled to the "Daily Chronicle." He was thanked by President Cleveland for his services to the cause of peace. His present visit to Washington is due, of course, to the war and the development of closer relations between the United States and Great Britain. Mr. Norman spent four years in the Far East, visiting among other countries the Philippine Islands, and he has published two wellknown books on the Far Eastern peoples and countries. Mrs. Norman is also an author. She was, before her marriage, Miss Ménie Muriel Dowie, and is a grand-daughter of Dr. Robert Chambers of Edinburgh. She has written several books, the earliest being "A Girl in the Karpathians," and the latest, "The Crook of the Bough."

"OF

6

course you fully understand," said of the masses of human scum from Central Mr. Speaker Reed to me a few days Europe, the outbreaks of savagery which ago, "that we have burst our swaddling- have characterized certain labor troubles, clothes'?" Everybody in the room smiled the degeneration of the Senate, the rejection at the characteristic sarcasm. But does of the Arbitration Treaty; above all, the apthe inflated phrase rest upon a substratum parently placid acquiescence of the better of truth, or do the American people and the American individual in things which he American idea stand virtually where they loathed these were some of the holes did three years ago? That is the most in- through which my optimism ran to waste. teresting question in the world to-day. It In fact, as Emerson said Englishmen do would be presumption to offer a confident answer: it is permissible to express an opinion.

when they speak of America, I forgot my philosophy and remembered my disparaging anecdotes. Distance lent deception to the view. Now I come back, use my eyes and ears for a few weeks, talk intimately with many people, and what is corrupt and dangerous falls into its proper proportion and perspective, pessimism hides itself like a night-prowling animal at sunrise, and when I discuss with Americans the future of their country I an apt to find myself more royalist than the king.

Why is this the effect of America revisited? I begin with little things.

When I graduated from Harvard, I thought I knew something of America. I found out my mistake after a few months spent in the West. During the seventeen years that have, alas! slipped away since then, American affairs have interested me in a degree second only to those of my own country. From time to time I have come back and corrected my impressions. On each occasion, however, a curious thing has happened. I have gone home profoundly impressed with the energy, the intelligence, The observant visitor to America must be the courage, the resources, and the prospects impressed first with the remarkable developof the American people; and bit by bit this ment of what may be called applied intelliimpression has oozed away, like wåter from gence. Not only is there an extraordinary a leaky tub, until I found myself doubting fertility of invention, but also, what is perwhether the United States is really on the haps more striking still, there is apparently up grade at all. The triumphs of corruption an instant readiness on everybody's part to in politics, the hair-breadth escape from make use of the things invented. In Europe, free silver and socialism at the White House, when we have a certain "fitment" in house the growth of trusts, the tariff tinkered to or office that serves its purpose well, we are fill the pockets of individuals, the capture of satisfied with it and go on with our work. New York by Tammany, the capitulation of If anybody comes along with something New England to the Irish, the social condi- rather better, we look upon him as a nuition of the coal and iron districts of Penn- sance. The thing we have is quite good sylvania, the dangers lurking in the presence In America it seems that a man

enough.

us, it is obvious that we should follow intensive cultivation and employ every possible appliance to get more and cheaper produce from the land. The facts are the exact opposite. American agricultural machinery has revolutionized farming for you. We stand virtually where we did twenty-five or fifty years ago. Every English farm laborer believes that hedgehogs suck cows. My own man suffocates his bees at the end of each season, because he says they get lazy and are not worth keeping. The most convenient implement I own is an American horse-hoe. Cut green bones form one of the valuable foods for poultry. There is not, to the best of my belief, a green-bone cutter in the United Kingdom. I have just ordered one in

will try an object one day and throw it away the next for something a trifle more convenient or expeditious. From visit to visit, for example, I have observed a constant improvement in the telephone. The instrument has grown smaller, neater, more graceful, simpler, and easier to use. As it stands on an American desk to-day, it might be a flower-holder. In some of the best and most expensive parts of London to-day you cannot have a telephone put in your house at all. When you do, it is the ugly box arrangement of ten years ago. I call upon a journalist friend in New York. Upon his desk stands an elegant little apparatus through which he converses every afternoon with Washington and Chicago. In a London newspaper office you might as well look Massachusetts. for a machine for making liquid air. The These are trifling matters, if you will; but street cars are another example. When I they are extremely significant, and the same was here a short time ago, the system of considerations apply in every direction. The traction was by underground cable. This is English bicycle-makers tell you that a maalready apparently becoming extinct. The chine weighing less than thirty pounds is not cars themselves, too, are often marvels of really safe. I am a fairly heavy man, and I comfort and light. In London there is not, have ridden for three years a Columbia weighso far as I know, a single street car pro- ing twenty-five pounds, at all seasons and on pelled by any mechanical means, and they all kinds of roads, and the first accident or are the dim and dirty vehicles of a quarter breakage has yet to happen to it. American of a century ago. It is impossible to imagine heavy electrical machinery is going all over a better system of street tramport than the world. American locomotives are beating prevails, for instance, in Washington. Even British ones in foreign markets. American the traveling post-office runs by electricity mining machinery has long been without a along the tracks. Another striking example rival. Naturally, it is not agreeable for me, is builders' hardware. Locks, hinges, sash- as an Englishman, to chronicle these facts; pulleys, window-fasteners, bath-fittings, and, the like are years ahead of us. There is not a hotel in Europe-I do not believe there is a private house-in which these things are as graceful and serviceable as they are at the hotel where I stayed in New York. On this visit I noticed a new fitting on the wall of the bathroom. It was an electric heater for curling-irons! To you this perhaps seems a very ordinary kind of thing. I stood before it in amazement. Or take what you call elevators and we call lifts. We are in the dark ages still. There is not a building in London, indeed not in Europe, constructed with the ingenuity, the convenience, the elegance of some of the new big buildings in Broadway. I happen to be interested at this moment in housebuilding; therefore I am taking home a supply of small objects and a collection of catalogues of every kind. The farm offers another set of examples. Since in England our farms are comparatively small, and the competition of the Western prairie and Russian steppe and Argentine plain is ruining

and, of course, in other directions and enterprises the British manufacturer still beats the world. But I hold it to be a patriotic duty to warn my fellow-countrymen that they must alter their methods and make new and different efforts if they are to hold their own in the future.

I could fill pages with reflections suggested by "America Revisited." But the addendum" in War Time" suggests matters of vaster interest, so I hurry on. Two other observations, however, I must set down. First, it is obvious that not only in mechanical ingenuity and commercial enterprise are the American people advancing fast, but the growth of taste is also great and striking. In domestic architecture America has made great strides during the last few years, and to-day she is unsurpassed, even by England, the land of the beautiful home. In commercial architecture I think she is already ahead. There is a street-car terminus in Washington more attractive to the eye for sound artistic reasons than most city halls going up in Europe to-day. Better