crime reveals tendencies astounding to those who cherish the erroneous idea that mora! improvement has kept pace with mechanical and industrial progress. A well-fed clergyman once undertook to convince the writer that the world is fast being reclaimed from evil, and in support of his contention quoted statistics furnished by church authorities going to prove that the ratio of church membership is steadily increasing every year. On being shown by the findings of criminologists that prison inmates are increasing even more rapidlyat a race twice that of population-the good man elevated his hands and feelingly exclaimed: "Great Heavens! If this thing keeps up for another decade or two everybody will have become criminals-and church members!"

Travelers tell us of a country in Asia where the merchant often absents himself from his store all day, or even places his goods by the roadside, with the prices plainly marked, and a box of "change" beside them, so the traveler who may chance to pass can buy with little trouble-then goes off, and returns at night to gather up his money and the goods unsold. How would this plan work in our marts of trade or on our highways? Verily, do we not seem to need missionaries from the East-Buddhists and Confucians to teach us honesty, truthfulness, chastity, and filial love, and Mahometans to inculcate the virtue of sobriety?

A traveler in another Asiatic country, it is said, became tired while on the highway and asked his guide where to leave his pack while he went on a short trip. "Right here," said the guide. The traveler demurred, fearing his goods would be stolen. The guide ran up a hill, swept the surrounding plain with a spy-glass, and returned, saying, "Have no fears; the goods will not be touched; there is not a Christian anywhere within twenty miles!"

In the towns of India it is easy to approximate the English population merely by noting the number of its meat-shops and saloons. These two great industries receive no patronage from the benighted Hindus.

It is a startling reality that in this "age of murder" the

United States has outstripped the world, and now ranks as the most murderous nation on the globe. The year 1891 was a "record-breaker"-the number of homicides being 5,906, exceeding the record of 1889 by nearly 60 per cent., and that of 1885 over five-fold; yet by the year 1895 the number swelled to 10,500.

A traveler once got lost and wandered about, almost distracted, for many days, seeking in vain for evidences of civilized life. At last one day his attention was attracted by a conspicuous object dangling from a noosed rope suspended from the limb of a spreading oak. As he approached he saw unmistakable evidences that Judge Lynch had recently passed that way and officiated at an informal reception, or "social function," known in Western parlance as a "hanging bee," or "neck-tie party;" whereupon he sank upon his knees, and, clasping his hands in an ecstasy of joy, cried: "Thank God, at last I've struck a civilized country!"

A few years ago a learned high-caste Chinaman, Wong Chin Foo, fascinated by the garish light of our brilliant Christian civilization, came to this country imbued with an ambition to study our institutions, embrace Christianity, and master the secret of the marvelous activities and achievements of Occidental thought and action, and, thus equipped, to return home prepared to diffuse among his benighted countrymen some of the inestimable blessings of our glorious Western civilization;-to inject, so to speak, the leaping blood of the puissant, wide-awake West into the sluggish veins of the effete, moribund East. This was his noble, self-imposed mission. Upon closer inspection of the structure of our civilization, however,-seeing the hideousness of its seamy side; seeing its incompleteness and unsymmetrical, misshapen proportions; seeing that, like our dress, it is largely shoddy and tinsel, he was disenchanted. When he found, for instanceamong other things equally repugnant to his peculiar Oriental ideas-that more murders occur every six months in New York City alone than are committed during a whole year within the entire vast domain of the Chinese Empire, with

a teeming population a hundredfold greater, our heathen visitor concluded that possibly it was safer for his benighted countrymen to cling to their own time-honored forms and institutions for a time, and "endure present ills rather than fly to others they know not of."

It were difficult, perhaps, to form an estimate even approximately accurate of the extent to which anxiety and despondency produced by financial distress are responsible for the augmenting prevalence of suicide and insanity. It is significant, however, that these evils keep pace with the concentration of wealth and the increase of debt and enforced idleness. Insanity doubles within a decade. The New York State Board of Lunacy estimates that "seven thousand young women in New York and Brooklyn go insane every year for want of sufficient food and clothing." Twelve suicides in one day is the awful record scored by the city of New York, which eclipses Monte Carlo, the gambling hell of Europe. The number of cases of suicide in these United States in 1896 (6,529) marks an increase of 187 per cent. relative to population since 1890-a yearly increase of 31 per cent. Moreover, it may be styled as a civilization disease. Among savages lunacy is almost or quite unknown.

This picture is by no means attractive, I freely concede; and more's the pity-for, unfortunately, it is true. A man with a large crooked nose, of a roseate hue, once had his photograph taken. When shown his likeness, he said: "That photo is pretty good, only-I don't like that nose." The artist replied: "Neither do I-but it's yours!"

The fetters of debt and penury are doubly burdensome and intolerable to those who have grown accustomed to comparative prosperity. Frequent fluctuations of fortune; insecurity of position; shifting uncertainties of employment, wages, prices, or trade these evils are even more trying and more corrupting than the stationary uniformity of industrial and commercial life prevailing in Asiatic and European countries. The Eastern subject or peasant, schooled by stern necessity to habits of rigid, niggardly economy, plods along in "the

even tenor of his way" to satisfy his few and simple active wants, allured and tantalized by no illusive expectations of future gains and by feverish ambitions undisturbed.

The typical American citizen, on the other hand, has enjoyed years of comparative prosperity. He is unaccustomed to that pitiful parsimony which need has long imposed upon the toiler in the Old World; his ambition and pride of character have not been dwarfed by tyranny and oppression; his wants, his real requirements, are greater and more complex; his sensibilities and his susceptibility to suffering are keener. It is only a natural sequence of this era of industrial depression and maddening uncertainty, therefore, that the ever-present fear of poverty should so unduly excite and irritate his nervous system and selfish instincts as frequently to impair self-restraint and self-control, if not self-respect, and render him peculiarly liable wholly to give way to the promptings of passion.

Were further evidence requisite to establish to the satisfaction of any reasonable mind the truth of the proposition that poverty is the active missionary of sorrow and sin-the destroyer, and not the promoter and conservator, of the virtues-the tragic experience of the ill-starred "Jeanette" crew in the Arctic regions presents an extreme example fraught with significance. Refined, cultivated Christian gentlemen were for a time metamorphosed into ravenous bipedal beasts. When hunger assailed the citadel of life, stern, cruel necessity knew no law save that "first law of Nature," self-preservation. Christians were converted into cannibals. On the other hand, English criminals, transplanted in Australia and afforded opportunities for earning an honest and comfortable livelihood by dint of work, built up a prosperous, peaceful, law-abiding commonwealth. Mark the striking contrast, and the profound lesson it contains. Favorable environments improved their conduct and general character. Inducements--that is to say, temptations—to do wrong were diminished, or overcome by more powerful inducements to do right. Why, indeed, should they stoop to crime, when a living could be made as easily

by honest work? In both instances, quite naturally, they simply followed the "line of least resistance."

Nor need we draw upon Australian history for a striking demonstration of the saving grace of healthy economic conditions, for one of the original thirteen States of the Union has a similar chapter, and perchance the high-toned Australian nowadays takes great pride in tracing his lineage back to the "first families," a la our own F. F. V.'s. The experiment of Robert Owen at New Lanark eighty years ago affords another notable example of the regenerating influence of favorable environments upon human character and conduct. The thinkers of that period were amazed to see a population living in squalid want, intemperance, and crime, speedily converted into a sober, happy, law-abiding people.

A clergyman once asked a bright urchin, "How many bad boys does it take to make one good boy?" The lad replied, "Only one, sir, if you treat him well." Young and old alike are more easily led than driven. Fortunately love and kindness are "catching"-yet so are hatred and malice. But how much more pleasant and profitable to win by gentle kindness than by ruder means!

Gov. Pingree's famous potato-patch experiment at Detroit thoroughly demonstrated the fact that the reclamation of even the average "hobo" is possible and practicable. That concrete object-lesson should serve forever to silence the slanderous claim that the unemployed poor are such from choice, and dispose finally of the correlative assumption that in a recourse to drastic vagrancy laws lies a "solution" of the problem of the unemployed. The "free employment bureau" established about four years ago in the city of New York could find employment for only 20 per cent. of the tens of thousands who filed applications in the year 1897. A St. Louis daily that advertised in a single issue for a night watchman boasted of receiving almost 1,000 applications, and a New York daily twice that number.

During the reign of that royal impersonation of gluttony and greed, Henry VIII., England was filled with vagrants,