WANTS RIFLE-SHOOTING MADE NATIONAL SPORT.

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill!

Wilt thou seal up the avenues of ill?

Pay every debt as if God wrote the bill!

Lord Roberts Believes Patriotism Should Cause It to Take Its Place With Golf and Cricket.

Lord Roberts has been pleading for the instruction of all able-bodied citizens of England in rifle-shooting. He says, in the LondonExpress:

The rifle is our national weapon of to-day, but unhappily neither law nor custom enjoins that the manhood of our country should learn its use. Cricket and football are our national pastimes; why should we not make rifle-shooting another?

Rifle-shooting is a sport—a game attractive enough in itself; and every marksman should bear in mind that in learning how to shoot he is fitting himself as a member of a great empire to take up arms for the defense of his country. Rifle-shooting should be at once a national pastime and a patriotic duty.

The reasons for this suggestion are not few. “Bobs” proceeds to make the most of his case, for he goes on to say:

The American authorities, in the recently published rules for the “promotion of rifle practise,” gave it as their opinion that, “in estimating the military efficiency of a soldier, if we consider ten points as a standard of perfection, at least eight of these points are skill in rifle shooting,” and with that opinion I quite agree.

If, then, the scheme which I have been strenuously advocating for some time past is carried to a successful conclusion, we shall be a nation whose manhood will be for practical purposes all efficient soldiers—an efficiency, moreover, that can be obtained without the least interference with industrial or professional pursuits.

But for the whole scheme to be successful, it is desirable that boys, youths, and men should be given a certain amount of military training and instruction in the use of the rifle.

It is, I am aware, urged against my proposals that they are little short of conscription. I have frequently asserted before that I am altogether opposed to conscription as being totally inapplicable to an army the greater part of which must always be serving abroad.

Surely there is all the difference in the world between a nation, every man of which is obliged to serve in the ranks of the regular army and perform while in those ranks all the onerous duties of a regular soldier during times of peace and for small wars, as is the case on the Continent, and a nation which, while maintaining a regular army for foreign service, asks every man to undergo such a training as will fit him to take a useful part in a great national emergency when every true Briton would be, in point of fact, certain to volunteer, and only the shirkers, the unpatriotic, and the disloyal would be content to remain passive.

The people of this country should identify themselves with the army and take an intelligent interest in what the army has to do, and not regard it as something quite outside the national life; and this they would certainly do if military training became universal and rifle shooting a national pursuit.

We need not be afraid that such training and a generally acquired efficiency with the rifle would result in a spirit of militarism that would make us anxious for war. I believe, and would I could persuade haters of militarism to believe, that there is no surer guarantee of peace than to be prepared for war; and if every able-bodied man is prepared to play the part of the strong man armed, his own and his country’s goods will remain at peace.

Those who cry out for greater military efficiency and those who argue that less attention should be given to the things of war are seeking by opposite means the same result—the abolishment for all time of “that mad game the world so loves to play.”

What the Big Newspaper Writers Are Saying

Napoleonic Theory of the Relations of Man’s Stature and Genius—Iconoclasts vs. American Traditions—Time is Ripe for a Substitute for the Saloon—The Cash Value Placed by Law on the Life of a Man—Manual Labor Makes New Converts—Girard a Shining Model for Philanthropists—Advantages Resulting From Wealth’s Marriage Into “the Working Classes”—Does a Stepmother Make a Good Mother?—American Stomachs Are Not Deteriorating—Influence of Hate on the Efficiency of Armies—Early Risers on the Defensive.

Compiled and edited forThe Scrap Book.

Evidence Produced to Disprove Napoleon’s Theory That Short Men Are the More Intellectual.

What is the height of genius? How do its physical inches correspond with its altitude of mind and soul? These questions are a subject of curious inquiry with the BostonHerald.

Napoleon the Great, a short man, surrounded himself with a staff of short men. He did not care to look like a pygmy among his subordinates. Doubtless vanity contributed to his preference for few inches. He said of General Kléber: “He has all the qualities and defects of a tall man.”

Napoleon would not only have agreed with Lombroso that great men are short men, but he went further than that; he altered the stature of Frederick the great, of Alexander, of Cæsar, to suit himself. He always insisted that they were short men, but the chroniclers of their times tell us otherwise.

The chroniclers of Napoleon’s time seem to have been struck by his own fancy, for they made him as short as they conveniently could. His old friend Bourrienne wrote Napoleon’s height as five feet two inches. Constant put it at five feet one inch. But, after all, these were old French measures.

Captain Maitland’s testimony is more to the point. It was to Captain Maitland that Napoleon surrendered on board the Bellerophon. Maitland measured him and recorded the fallen conqueror’s height as five feet seven inches, English. That, by the way, is half an inch more than the stature of Lord Roberts.

But the Napoleonic theory does not bear the test of figures. Intellectual power in its varied manifestations is not found at its utmost strength in small men only. It takes men as it finds them—tall and short, thin and plump—and it seems to rather like height.

Thackeray was six feet four inches. So was Fielding. Scott, Walt Whitman, and Tennyson were six-footers. Goethe, the elder Dumas, Robert Burns, and Longfellow were five feet ten inches. J. M. Barrie is only five feet five inches, and Kipling only five feet six inches. Edwin A. Abbey has the same height as Barrie; so has Alma-Tadema.

Lord Curzon is six feet one inch, George Westinghouse is over six feet two inches, Andrew Carnegie is five feet four and a half inches, President Roosevelt is five feet nine inches. Mr. Gladstone was five feet nine inches. Sir Henry Irving was an inch taller.

Edmund Burke and Oliver Cromwell were five feet ten and a half inches, which, by the way, is the height of the present Prime Minister of England, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman. Wellington was half an inch taller than Napoleon.

That trio of great admirals—Nelson, Blake, and Sydney Smith—were a little under five feet six inches. Bismarck was a tall man, but not so tall as George Washington, who was six feet three inches. Sargent, the great painter, is six feet; Carlyle, Darwin, Huxley, and Ruskin were six-footers.

Disraeli and Dickens were five feet nine inches, which is also the stature of Sir William Crookes. Sir Oliver Lodge is six feet three inches, Marconi five feet ten and a half inches.

Emerson, Hans Andersen, Wordsworth, Bunyan, Audubon, Corot, Moltke, Millet, Gounod, Lord Clive, and Lord Brougham were tall men. So were Humboldt and Helmholtz. Lord Kelvin is five feet seven inches, Lord Reay six feet two inches. Conan Doyle is six feet one inch, Anthony Hope three inches shorter. All these figures give the stature of the men in their boots.

King Edward is five feet eight and a half inches, the Kaiser just an inch shorter. The Mikado is five feet six inches, the King of Italy five feet two inches. The Czar’s height is the same as the Kaiser’s. Leopold, King of the Belgians, is six feet five inches.

Peter the Great was six feet eight and a half Inches. Abraham Lincoln was just under six feet two inches, Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Richard Burton six feet. Alfred de Musset, Froude, Puvis de Chavannes, Poussin, Lessing. Schiller, Lamartine, and Sterne were tall men. W. S. Gilbert is over six feet.

It would be possible to lengthen this list to the point of tediousness. But the more the subject is examined, the farther away we get from the Napoleonic theory. Nature has a pretty wide range in these matters, and she makes the most of it.

When it comes to averages, figures prepared by the anthropometric committee of the British Association for the Advancement of Science indicate that the average stature of the male adults of England is five feet seven inches and seven-eighths, although the professional and commercial classes show “a mean height of from two to three inches above this, and the laboring classes an inch or two below.” The Scotch and Irish are a little taller, and the Welsh a little shorter than the English.

The average for the United States is said to be taller than the English—a fact which implies neither genius nor the lack of it.

Persons Who Hew Too Close to the Line of History Get Little Thanks for Their Pains.

Iconoclasts have been busy with American history for a good many years. They have cut the props from under more than one valued tradition. In the interest of literal fact they have destroyed much that is imaginatively valuable. Too often the one can be gained only by loss of the other, and it is not easy to decide which vantages most. At least there is some ground for nourishing tradition.

H. J. Haskell praised the “researchers” in a recent article in theIndependent. The ChicagoInter-Oceanmakes reply, saying:

Mr. Haskell cites as a correction of “important errors in the viewpoint” “the proof that the Revolution was not the result of conscious tyranny and oppression on the part of the British Government.”

Well, who now cares whether it was or was not? What difference does it make either way in the relations of the American and British peoples and their governments? Those relations are determined by present interests and future hopes.

We know our forefathers were right, and we do not care whether their opponents were right from their own viewpoint or not. Englishmen who count know that their forefathers blundered egregiously, and do not care whether they were conscientious or not in their folly.

It may be true—it probably is—that Weems fabricated outright the cherry-tree story about George Washington. But what difference does that make? The story simply imputed to Washington the boy the known character of Washington the man. It hurt no one, and it has inspired millions of American boys, by setting before them the example of a man whose greatness and goodness none could question, to be true rather than false, even when it was hard to tell the truth.

A great deal is said about the “rehabilitation” of Aaron Burr. But what is the effect of it all? To show that Burr was not technically a traitor? The courts said so long ago, and, despite personal opinions, the verdict was accepted as the law in practise. In trying doubly to prove Burr no traitor, the rehabilitators have proved him a blackmailing filibusterer—a man who lacked the courage to conquer a State, but sought to steal one—a man whose ambition and effort it was to play the part of

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,That from a shelf the precious diadem stole.And put it in his pocket!

A cutpurse of the empire and the rule,

That from a shelf the precious diadem stole.

And put it in his pocket!

A great deal is also said of the evidence from his own diary of the “hollowness” and the “double dealing” of President Polk in his conduct toward Mexico. What is really proved by this evidence is that James K. Polk was not a cheap opportunist, waiting to be forced to act by situations created by others, but foresaw those situations and was ready to take advantage of them for the expansion of his country and the increase of its power.

To discover that James K. Polk was never taken by surprise, and that all his great political acts were purposed and planned for long in advance, does not degrade him, but exalts his character by proving its conscious strength. It lifts James K. Polk out of the Gladstone class and puts him at least on the borders of the Bismarck class of statesmanship.

And of what earthly or heavenly importance is it to any human soul to know that the Pilgrims did not actually land in a body on Plymouth Rock on a certain day? Or that the old stone tower at Newport is not what Longfellow suggested, a relic of the Northmen, but merely Governor Arnold’s windmill?

Or that the Spanish settlers in America treated the Indians, on the whole, more humanely than did the English? Or that, if the Americans’ powder had not run out and they had been able to hold Bunker Hill, they would probably have been captured the next day?

With all their labor and kicking up of dust, and the personal notoriety they get by it, the “researchers” whom Mr. Haskell praises have not changed the main and abiding conceptions of our history at all. Their game seems hardly worth the candles consumed at it.

Truth is the first aim of the historian. History has been characterized as a pack of lies, generally agreed to by its makers.

“Anything but history,” said Horace Walpole, “for history must be false.”

The business of the scientific historian is to examine all witnesses, hear all the evidences, and get at the exact facts, even though they make ancient reputations tumble.

And yet we cannot but ask with Wordsworth:

Those old credulities, to nature dear,Shall they no longer bloom upon the stockOf History?

Those old credulities, to nature dear,

Shall they no longer bloom upon the stock

Of History?

After Three Months’ Abstinence, San Francisco Finds That It Has Lost Its Old-Time Thirst.

San Francisco, after its terrific shake-up, dropped the liquor business temporarily. The man in control foresaw the dangers of alcohol to a homeless community.

After three months saloons were permitted to open. What was the effect? A simultaneous rush for the swinging doors? Not at all. People seemed to have got out of the way of drinking; and this was true in spite of the fact that, during the period of “enforced abstinence,” they could always get liquor from outside the city limits, if they wanted it.

The San FranciscoChroniclesays:

Liquor drinking is with most people not the gratification of an appetite, but a mere habit. There is no liquor and few wines which taste good. Even the toper who takes his whisky straight washes the taste out of his mouth with water as quickly as he can.

With a comparatively few there is a real craving for liquor, or at least for its stimulating effects, but the vast majority of those who drink in saloons do so merely because in the poverty of their intellects they know no other way of manifesting good fellowship toward friends whom they meet. So the drink habit is formed, which, in some cases, degenerates into dissipation and the drunkard’s craving.

But even the classes which contain most of our hard drinkers seem really to care little for whisky, for they are not resorting to the saloons in any such number as was expected. Some seem to have formed the buttermilk or some similar habit, and have no inclination to return to the saloon—doubtless greatly to the happiness of their wives and the comfort of their children.

Whether this will last we do not know. Probably not. Mankind is gregarious, and the only public roof under which men may gather for the free enjoyment of a pipe and a friendly chat is the roof of the saloon. Therefore they will go to the saloon, and keep going until society tempts them away with something at least equally attractive.

They can go to the Young Men’s Christian Association, but they don’t want to. They will not be allowed to light their pipes, put their feet on the table, lean back in their chairs and blow smoke-rings to the ceiling.

Not even the public libraries do anything to draw men from the saloons. They must be “decorous,” take off their hats, and be silent. They don’t want to. Every public library should have a smoking-room where ordinary conversation is allowed. It will not disturb those who are reading. If it does they can go to other rooms.

The fact that it is habit and not appetite that is to be dealt with is the psychological basis of the so-called Gothenberg plan. On that plan all the saloons of a city are conducted by a corporation, whose members receive as dividends only a fixed, moderate interest on the investment, all profits above that going, in some form, to the public. There is no “bar.”

Customers sit at a table and their liquor is served to them. All saloons must keep “soft drinks” and give them at least as much prominence as is given to strong drinks. Under no circumstances is any attendant to have any interest in the sales of liquor, although in some cases he is allowed a commission on soft drinks and other refreshments.

No one is permitted to get intoxicated on the premises. There is no attempt to compel men to abstain. There is a continual temptation to do so. The army canteen was based on this theory, and was a most useful institution until some misguided women abolished it and drove the soldiers to debauchery. Nothing else was to be expected, or was expected, by the experienced.

The experience of this city proves that the drink habit is not difficult to overcome—not, however, by coercion, but by temptation. And men cannot be tempted to any extent by any efforts which have the missionary or altruistic flavor. Men wish to assemble in public places where there is entire freedom as to dress and appearance, and where there is no danger that anybody will solicit them to become better men. They are not only willing, but desire, to spend something for the “good of the house” and their own entertainment.

If society will provide them with such a place a good many will go there in preference to a saloon. If, at the same time, all saloons are abolished, they will speedily content themselves with such substitutes as we have suggested.

All of which would seem to support the theory that the saloon is “the poor man’s club.”

Legal Decisions Indicate That His Cash Value Begins to Deteriorate When He Is Twenty-Five.

What is the value of a man? What is his average physical value, measured in dollars and cents? We hear it said that in partly civilized countries human life is cheap. We are told that the great movements typified by the American and French revolutions have raised the value of the individual. Can we get these comparisons into an arithmetical table?

Summarizing the statements of another journal, the Saint LouisGlobe-Democratsays:

After looking over legal decisions in the various States,Bench and Bar, a publication devoted to affairs of the law, estimates that at ten years of age a boy of the laboring class is worth two thousand and sixty-one dollars and forty-two cents; at fifteen, four thousand two hundred and sixty-three dollars and forty-six cents; at twenty-five, five thousand four hundred and eighty-eight dollars and three cents; from which time the decline is steady, a man of seventy, by this legal decision scale, rating at only seventeen dollars and thirteen cents.

By the same practical method of computation, one eye is worth five thousand dollars; one leg, fifteen thousand dollars; two legs, twenty-five thousand dollars; one arm, ten thousand dollars; one hand, six thousand dollars; one finger, one thousand five hundred dollars; and permanent disability, twenty-five thousand dollars. This is merely an average as far as decisions have been examined.

One of the candidates on the Democratic State ticket, who was crippled for life while an employee on a Missouri railroad, fought his case through the courts for nearly ten years, gained it several times, but finally received nothing. So practise varies as well as theory.

The estimates of the value of a man’s life are based upon an idea not of his value to himself, but of his value to others. The figures in individual cases would vary greatly with reference to whether or not the person’s death caused hardship to others who had been dependent on him. The value of a man to himself is unimportant after he is dead. His value to society at large cannot be considered in a cash estimate, since that kind of value often depends upon other than physical resources. His value to those who look to him for support can alone be estimated on the material side.

Southern Newspaper Takes Issue With an English Naval Critic Who Avers That It Does.

E. T. Jane, the English naval critic, says the reason the Japanese defeated the Russians was that the Japanese hated the Russians and longed to kill them, whereas the Russian soldiers felt no consuming hatred against their ant-like enemies. The Columbia (South Carolina)Statetakes issue with the theory, as follows:

Mr. Jane is wrong, both as to his facts and as to his theory. First as to his facts:

The Japanese did not hate the Russians. They fought with tremendous fury at times, but it was a calculated fury, never a whirlwind of blind passion. Never for a single moment in the long struggle did they show such fury as to lose sight of the essential principle of modern warfare, complete self-protection. Nor did they show any passion on the field of battle, such as slaughtering wounded men, or mutilating the dead; yet the Russians were guilty of both atrocities.

When Russian prisoners were taken to Japan they were treated with so much consideration and kindness that they were happier than they had been within their own lines in Manchuria. Witness, again, the magnanimous and truly magnificent treatment accorded Stoessel and his garrison and Rojestvensky and his captured officers and men.

Not from the beginning to the close of the war did the Japanese exhibit any hatred of the Russians. They fought like knights, like bushi—

The knightliest of the knightly race,That since the days of old,Have kept the lamp of chivalryAlight in hearts of gold.

The knightliest of the knightly race,

That since the days of old,

Have kept the lamp of chivalry

Alight in hearts of gold.

And considering Mr. Jane’s theory, that hate makes a good fighter, it is as false to-day as it was in the heyday of chivalry. The poet is right in his view that “the bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring.”

The old British idea, inherited from the teachings of Nelson and his half-corsair predecessors, that an Englishman “should hate a Frenchman like the devil,” is a sentiment that could well have had its origin in the place to which Nelson went for his sprightly imagery.

The best fighters of the world to-day are the men who can remain cool, unperturbed, unblinded by passion in the midst of battle. This is necessary in order that they may see straight and shoot straight; it is necessary in order that they may be able to protect themselves from the shot and shell of the enemy.

It is conceivable that a warrior of the olden time might have been a bit more effective when rushing furious with hate into the ranks of his foe and laying about him with short-sword, or falchion, or claymore; although even in such case the cool-headed warrior was generally able to meet and overcome the raging brute. To maintain that hate makes a good soldier is to challenge the scientific theory of warfare.

Hate has never made a man more efficient in any good cause, and in very few bad ones. Browning says of Dante that he “loved well because he hated,” but Dante “hated wickedness that hinders loving.” No mere hate adds anything to a man’s efficiency. It saps his real strength by misdirecting it and spending it on the air in blind fury; it poisons and corrodes the heart and mind.

Chaucer says that “hate is old wrath”; it is, therefore, a demoralizing and debasing passion, weakening alike to body and the mind. The recklessness it inspires on the battle-field or in the daily struggles of life is ineffective against the coolness, deliberateness, and resourcefulness of the passionless fighter.

Philadelphia Writer Says Only the Lower Animals Go to Bed and Get Up With the Sun.

The delightful Elia, who is the closest personal friend one may find in all literature, exposed certain fallacies once and for all to the satisfaction of those who are whimsically inclined. However, since not all minds have the whimsical turn, the fallacies continue to bob up from time to time with a vitality that is suspiciously Antæan.

Consider the proverb: “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.” Any schoolboy will tell you that this is not so; and yet the fallacious statement persists—parents still preach it; aged money-makers explain their success by it.

Says the PhiladelphiaPublic Ledger:

The very early riser is usually an opinionated individual, and it is likely that his habit of early rising is his only claim to distinction. More poetry has been written about eventide than the dawn. This is quite conclusive, for poets are sensible folk and not much given to the folly of early rising.

Some good literary work has been done in the early hours, but this is exceptional. Sir Walter Scott, it is said, wrote the most of his romances before breakfast; but a multitude of authors have produced immortal works by the light of the midnight oil without smelling of it.

Early risers descant rapturously upon the delicious freshness of the morning air and other delights which it is reported can be enjoyed about sunrise, against which may be offset the loveliness of the dying day, the deepening shadows of the twilight, and the charm of moonlight. The glories of the dawn rest in rumor only to the most of us, and must be taken on faith. The suffrages of the majority are for the sunset, and the majority rules in the Republic.

John Wesley wrote an excellent sermon on early rising. Doddridge took pride in the fact that he was at work at five in the morning; but the famous Doctor Wilson (Christopher North) scouted the whole brood of sunrise workers in a lengthy essay, which is the comfort and solace of all lazy and normal people.

Wilson refused to take it for granted that early rising is a virtuous habit, or that early risers are a particularly meritorious set.

“I object to both clauses of the bill,” says the courageous dissenter. “Early risers are generally milksop spoonies, ninnies with broad, unmeaning faces and groset eyes, cheeks odiously rosy, and with great calves to their legs.”

This indictment was written in Scotland. Matters may not be quite so disgraceful here. Wilson questioned the motives of his fellow countrymen who sally forth at an impossibly early hour, and suggested that their ambition is merely to get an omnivorous appetite for breakfast.

“Let no knavish prig purse up his mouth and erect his head when he meets an acquaintance who goes to bed and rises at a gentlemanly hour.”

The lower orders of creation go to bed and rise with the sun. Primitive man probably had this vicious habit. Civilization has gradually reduced the ranks of early risers to the healthy and vigorous persons who purvey ice and milk with much clatter when they ought to be abed. The length of human life is increasing, and this is due to late rising. There can be no doubt about it. The sun rises hereabouts at this season [July] at 4:30A.M., and few there be who have the nerve to witness the phenomenon.

Men Who Have Won Their Way With Their Brains Now Give Their Hands a Chance.

Men of standing are more willing to work with their hands than they used to be. The new love for outdoor life may be in part responsible; as also the growing interest in art-craft, and a steady reaction against the “machine-made.” In any event manual work has been acquiring new dignity.

The Saint PaulDispatchsays that until within a few years we were so bent on emphasizing the intellectual that the manual had no honor.

To a certain appreciable extent this is changing. Men are interested to-day in seeing how much they can do for themselves. It is not alone that the art-craft movement has been inaugurated. We speak of a very much more intimate and amateurish thing than that.

It is that men are resuming the ax and hammer for the little common duties. They are making things for the house instead of calling in the casual carpenter. Younger men still in school are employing their vacation with carpenter work.

It is no longer quite so respectable to spend a college long-vacation canvassing for books. It is now entirely respectable to offer one’s services to a carpenter and be employed in some concrete service which shall at the summer’s end have a visible aspect.

This is a genuine triumph, and will work toward the accomplishment of that balancing of functions which has been much disturbed of late.

Now that men have reformed, we wonder if a similar development can be expected of women. There has been the drift in woman work away from the work of the hand to that of the mind.

School teaching has been a pervading ambition, and housework has been an evil from which only the most skilled failed of escape. In essence, one is no less worthy an employment than the other; each has certain philanthropic aspects which should appeal equally to women. But one has been exalted and the other debased because of the manual work, the esteem of the work of the hands.

There is a slightly detectable drift back toward manual labor, although much less apparent than in men’s work. But at least there has been discovered a science of household economics, and concrete exemplification of this science may secure recognition.

It will probably be long before women of colleges during the summer vacations may with impunity, social impunity, go into the hotels or the private kitchens, to work, as college men are going into the carpenter shop.

Why there should be this invidious distinction we do not know, since, so far as we can judge, it is quite as noble to feed mankind as to provide shelter. But the evolution will be worth watching and assisting.

Farsightedness of Stephen Girard Made His Bequests the Most Valuable in the Country.

The death of Russell Sage and the problem of the distribution of his millions were the subject of much comment, some of which led naturally to editorial reminiscence. The Saint LouisGlobe-Democratreverts to the case of Stephen Girard, who, proportionately to the amount of his possessions, was probably his country’s greatest benefactor in the way of public bequests.

When Stephen Girard died in Philadelphia, in 1831, he was easily the richest man in the United States, the estate he disposed of amounting to seven million dollars. By will, he gave one hundred and forty thousand dollars to relatives (he was a childless widower), a number of bequests to employees, ninety-six thousand dollars to organized charities, three hundred thousand dollars to the State of Pennsylvania for internal improvements, and certain property in Louisiana to the city of New Orleans for public improvements.

The residue, amounting to over six million dollars, was bestowed on the city of Philadelphia, chiefly for the erection and maintenance of a college to accommodate not fewer than three hundred white male orphans, and the courts have construed a fatherless boy to be an orphan.

Mr. Girard put the city in charge of this work, and since 1869 it has been managed by a board of trustees appointed by the courts. Under its care the value of the Girard estate has increased to thirty-two million five hundred and fifty thousand dollars, three-fourths of which is productive real estate, with the remainder in choice cash assets.

Girard College, with its seventeen buildings, occupies forty acres. Its pupils at present number one thousand four hundred and eighty-three, and up to the present time it has fed, clothed, and educated seven thousand seven hundred boys, fitting them to step at once into active pursuits. This work will go on through the centuries with increasing resources.

Girard had a striking version of what wealth is for. He was a natural money-maker from his first commercial venture. He enjoyed the shaping of business and making it pay. He was no easy mark, but, giving others their due, exacted his own. His public spirit was highly developed, an inborn trait.

As a banker in the period of the second war with England, Girard personally saved the credit of the national credit more than once. He served Philadelphia many years in various official capacities, including that of councilman. Large internal improvements appealed to him strongly, and he was among the foremost in advocating and subscribing to them.

Girard set no value upon wealth, except as a means to accomplish worthy ends, and these were more to him than his money, or even his life.

In the year 1793, when Philadelphia lost a sixth of its population by yellow fever, and most of its citizens had fled, Girard personally took the inside management of a pest-house, ignoring all other business for two months. In one hundred days of that autumn the burials in the city exceeded four thousand.

At forty years of age Girard had only a competence, and wrote to a friend: “I do not value fortune. The love of labor is my highest ambition. I observe with pleasure that you have a numerous family and that you are in possession of an honest fortune. This is all a wise man has a right to wish for.”

Yet in the next forty years, largely through the fluctuations of values caused by war, he honestly and usefully accumulated seven million dollars, and devoted it to an everlasting mission of beneficence to his fellow men. He wrote that “Labor is the price of life, its happiness, its everything. To rest is to rust.”

He was long-headed in his views. More than a century ago his advice for a large city was: “Build high, as there is only one ground rent.” He would have none but solid construction.

A farm near the city was his place of recreation. On his journeys there his lunch was under the seat, and on his return the space was occupied with milk and butter for his domestic use. But he spent a great deal of money on the introduction of rare plants and fine cattle. He steadily declared that no man should be an idler on his money, and he kept his word.

It is well said of him that “The spirit of work made him active; the spirit of justice made him exact; the spirit of trade made him rich; the spirit of duty made him brave; the spirit of patriotism made him generous; and the spirit of love made him great.”

As a credit mark on the side of a vast fortune Girard is conspicuous, and he fully succeeded in not dying rich, for he gave all to his fellow citizens, making sure that it would be safeguarded for that purpose forever.

Girard was a strange character. Penurious about small things, disagreeable in his personality, he was generous, beneficent, and public-spirited in a large way.

A Writer Asserts That Wealth’s Marriage Into the “Working Classes” Will Benefit the Race.

It is not altogether increasing newspaper sensationalism that indicates a larger number of marriages between rich men and poor girls. There are, it seems safe to say, more and more such marriages.

The judge does not always ride sadly away and leave Maud Müller raking hay. Frequently he departs only to get a marriage license and return post-haste. And Maud drops her rake right gladly and directs the way to the nearest justice of the peace.

Says the New YorkMedical Journal:

Marriages are constantly occurring in the United States between young men of great wealth and young women engaged in earning their own living; but, despite the familiarity of the phenomenon, no such marriage ever fails to cause apparently astonished comment, and, above all, copious newspaper gossip.

In Europe, where those who have inherited wealth are taught and really believe that they are of superior clay to the class of inherited poverty, and the latter assent to the teaching, such alliances may well cause a slight shock, diluted perhaps with some pleasure at the condescension of the man.

In our country, however, where one family can hardly have the pas of another by a single century, astonishment is ridiculous and out of place. Few of our richest men are idle, and their work differs only in magnitude from that of the poor.

If we grant that a century of idleness can enervate a family, a marriage into the “working classes” can only be beneficial. Stock must be enriched from time to time from near the soil.

Advocates of highly restricted interbreeding are fond of pointing to the race-horse as a superior product of their principles. A race-horse, however, is a poor creature from the point of view of usefulness; he is a beautiful specialized bundle of nerves, and requires more coddling than a healthy human baby.

Interbreeding does not work out well in the human species; the haughty Austrian aristocracy, which considers the nobility of France and England as upstarts, and ostracizes any member who marries into a family much younger than the Cæsars, is not as a class strong and healthy.

It is from Austria in great measure that our circuses secure their giants and midgets, and many other of the various “freaks,” objects of interest certainly, but hardly of pride.

Intellectually, we do not think that the statesmen of Austria, Spain, and Russia are the equals of those of France and the United States, while the English commoners have given a remarkable account of themselves.

We should be disposed to applaud the good sense of any rich young American who married a beautiful girl of poor but decent antecedents, in spite of the fact that such marriages depend upon unreasoning sexual attraction, like the great majority of marriages. As it is, we can only note the care Nature takes of a race, however heedless she may be of the individual.

Considerable Discussion Is Provoked by Vice-Chancellor Pitney’s Assertion That She Does Not.

Vice-chancellor Pitney, of New Jersey, passing on an application to have two children taken from their divorced mother and placed in charge of their stepmother, is reported to have said:

I never knew of a stepmother who was a good mother. There may be such instances on record, but I know of none, and I have had some experience.

Naturally, the Vice-Chancellor has been strongly controverted. Thus the New YorkWorldsays:

The stepmother of fiction has a sharp face and a sharp tongue, and rarely misses an opportunity to wound sensitive young souls.

But the stepmother of fact is usually quite a different person. Certain individuals of scientific habits who have dabbled in the domestic relations believe that it would be better for most children if they could be brought up by stepmothers instead of mothers.

The stepmother generally has all the maternal instinct that any healthy child needs, while she is not likely to be a victim of the delusion that her stepchildren are so much better than other people’s children that it is an impenetrable mystery why they do not die young.

But, of course, there are stepmothers and stepmothers, and doubtless the woman who makes a poor stepmother would make a poor mother if she had children of her own.

As a popular prejudice the aversions to stepmothers has little more basis in fact than the aversion to mothers-in-law. Most men, in spite of the professional humorists, are on excellent terms with their mothers-in-law, and most women who have married daughters are excessively fond of their sons-in-law. At its best the mother-in-law joke was never a very good joke. Its humor consists largely in its not being true.

Vice-Chancellor Pitney may know a good deal about the kind of stepmothers who get into court, but the opinion of Abraham Lincoln about stepmothers is more valuable, because he was brought up by one.

The Macon (Georgia)Telegraphindicates why stepmothers may do better for children than a mother can.

The one defect in the God-like mother love is the inability to view her offspring with an impartial eye, and see them as others see them. And it would be far from a bold estimate to venture that the majority of men who get into trouble in later life turn their thoughts back at such times to an irresponsible childhood when a devoted and indulgent mother’s love stood between them and the penalties of all childish misdeeds.

The stepmother, on the other hand, endowed, as a rule, with the maternal affection that springs eternal in the woman’s breast, but unblinded by the other’s bias for the children of her flesh, more frequently approaches her often thankless task, governed by a sense of duty, rather than by affection merely, and many have there been as a result, both men and women, Vice-Chancellor Pitney’s dictum to the contrary notwithstanding, to rise up and call the stepmother blessed.

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