cess.

Samuel Adams and Otis and Warren, so the lessons given at Philadelphia will be illuminated and enforced by Carpenters' Hall and Independence Hall and all the associations of the old city of the Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence and the Constitutional Convention and the administration of Washington. The Philadelphia lecturers are to be felicitated on the inspirations and the helps which they will find so plentifully close at hand. We wish Mr. Welsh and his friends the highest sucMr. Welsh's "open letter" is as follows: Many Philadelphians are doubtless familiar with the Old South Lecture Course, which had its origin in Boston, in the historic meeting-house from which it derived its name as a local habitation, and from which a vigorous shoot, as we are informed, has taken root and now flourishes in Chicago. The object of the Old South lecture plan was the development of a wholesome spirit of patriotism in the public-school children of Boston, a spirit somewhat in danger, apparently, of falling into a declineand the cultivation of that knowledge of the duties of good citizenship, and of a sense of responsibility for a performance of them, which was felt to be a public necessity. The generosity of a single public-spirited and wealthy woman saved the Old South Church building from destruction when it was threatened by the tides of the city's growth, and gathered within walls which had once listened to the words of Warren, Otis, and of Washington, hundreds of public-school children, to be informed of the incidents of the lives of American patriots and of the principles which had made them illustrious. The plan seems to have worked well, judging by the number of years that it has been in operation, and by the great number of young peo ple brought under its influence, and in whom it has aroused a strong sense of responsibility for the right use of their national inheritance. Of course, like most sound educational schemes, its strength lies in wise seed-planting and in patient restraint from expectations of a hasty harvest. We are told that one able and energetic woman has obliged Tammany to sweep the streets of New York. If Boston and New York can do this much (the one city for education, the other for cleanliness) through the public spirit of a woman, why should the New Philadelphia do less? Cannot the Colonial Dames or the New Century Club furnish a Jael who shall emulate in courage, if not in craft, her Hebrew prototype, and smite fatally the Sisera of municipal corruption and misrule? And why should not this simple and effective plan of the Old South Lecture Course, whereby the civic courage, independence, homely belief in public honesty, in duty and self-sacrifice all the elements of a national life truly and permanently great- are placed in an attractive and impressive form before the children of to-day, be made use of in Philadelphia? The secret of the success of the Old South plan is that it teaches history from a living and most practical standpoint. It is the application of the best that our past has given to the brain and heart of the youth of the present. It aims to get a hearing from the young men and the young women just entering active life on behalf of moral aspiration and of duty, before the low motives and false standards of the business or social or political world have had time to exert their evil influence. To a reasonable extent, at least, such a plan, if wisely and patiently carried out, is sure to succeed. Men, who under its provisions talk on American history and good citizenship to the public-school children, are chosen so to do because they are authorities on their special subjects, and are themselves scholars both of the closet and of the world, and are engaged in practical efforts for lifting the standards of American citizenship. They have upon them the smell of the smoke of the same battle into which they call the children. That fact is a potent one.

"Suppose the Old South shall be planted in Philadelphia, (and why should the city where Independence rang out be afraid to again follow the lead of the city which threw the invading tea into the waters of Boston Harbor?) what a fine double object-lesson we shall have, right

to hand, for bringing home to youthful minds the principles we wish to instil! We can point the publicschool children of Philadelphia to the Old State House, not only as a building peopled with the figures, and haunted with the memories of a great past - a building which once gathered within its walls the makers of the nation, and where were reaffirmed the ancient rights of free Englishmen, in words that, like the shot of Lexington, "echoed round the world"-but we can also bid them note those curious, and, in the judgment of some of us, alarming evidences of the changes and decay in popular government that are now taking place under the same roof which covers the cracked Liberty Bell. Had one of the Old South lectures been given in Philadelphia yesterday noon, for example, to an audience of six hundred children, at the conclusion of the lecture a delegation chosen from their number might, with great profit, have gone at three o'clock direct to the Council Chamber, and there have witnessed a highly instructive exhibition of modern representative government. The value of maps as an aid to the study of history is generally admitted, but no map could so assist the youthful student of municipal government to understand this question as would his bodily presence in the Select Council Chamber have done. The effigy of Washington—a bad and distorted copy of Stuart's original picture-confronting him, with equally unfortunate portraits, artistically considered, of more modern public men, hanging as pendants beside it, would at once have placed the sensitive studentobserver in harmony with his surroundings. The atmosphere, thick with the fumes of tobacco rising from the mouths of the municipal legislators present, would have made still more evident to him that degree of dignity which is now accorded to the transaction of public business. On his right, and facing the legislators, he would have seen a large body of serious-faced and observant citizens, representing various kinds of business, trades, and professions, watching with keen, though not hopeful, interest the determination by their representatives of a pending question of vital public interest. Immediately in front of him he would have seen seated the astute and apparently unconcerned agent of a powerful corporation, which habitually confuses the city's affairs with its own, watching, however, with equal interest the votes of his representatives in the Chamber. And then our student might have been interested further to note a suggestive incident of the occasion. When the legislators who obey the mandates of the corporation referred to were voting in its interest, and one of their number, a representative from the Fourth Ward, unexpectedly failed to record his vote, the surprise and alarm of the corporation agent so completely overcame him that he sprang forward toward the derelict member with an exclamation of warning, in an undertone but quite distinct, "Bill! Bill!" He was reassured by a glance, however, from the member, whose silence he had misinterpreted, and the latter, when the corporation votes were all in, seized the opportunity for greater emphasis which he had awaited, and in loud tones recorded the vote of obedience which his superior desired. In a word, no finer opportunity could be afforded for realistic study-in harmony with the realistic spirit of our day-of that gradual absorption of the powers of legislation and of the control of public affairs, once exercised by the people, which, on the part of powerful and wealthy corporations, is now going on. If the Old South lecture plan shall be adopted in Philadelphia, the older children of our public schools might have all the educative advantage, which has been suggested, of seeing the actual process of this unhealthy growth-the strength of the oak waning under the embrace of the parasite. But even if the public-spirited women of Philadelphia do not start the Old South plan here, there is no reason why the male adults of the city should not avail themselves of the chance to drop in some fine afternoon on a council meeting, when some important question is upthe gift of a hundred miles of streets, for example, to a street railway company-just to see how the thing is done. They might glance, on their way out, at the window from which the Declaration of Independence was read, and then go home to make up their minds whether the "kickers" should be helped or "knocked out" at the next municipal election. Either experiment, or both, would advance the political welfare of the public."

"WORSHIPPERS OF LIGHT ANCESTRAL."

To the namesake of a great man. COULD Dante's spirit roam this earth again, Since death, as into hell it walked before, But scant reminder of that other shore Perchance would meet his risen eyes. Yet when The sacred circle of the "upper ten"

He gained, he sure would ask outside the door, "Whence comes that voice I thought to hear no more?

Alas, poor Farinata ! ! Art thou then

Here, too, to greet me? Cam'st thou here to dwell

And shriek those selfsame words thou didst in Hell?"

"Who were thine ancestors, say, who?" The cry Yet louder grown, then would the bard repeat, "Is't he?" And thus the guide would make reply,

"Dear Dante, no, these live on Beacon Street." — A. S. Bridgman.

---

A TREASURER-Trove.

COME, Grandsire, I have you out at last,
And you may drop your Puritanic scowl!
If you were more than paint and canvas now,
I'd nudge your formal ribs, despite your frown
That oft has checked my gayety, and vow
No jollier lover ever sighed.

To think

That you should scribble rhymes to Prudence,

Patience,

Priscilla, Chloris, Phyllis, and a score
Of prim enchantresses, were past belief,
Had I not ample proof of it. This roll
Of tell-tale papers, that I found to-day

In a neglected, curious old press,

Gives evidence that in your bosom burned

A love like mine. Here's one inscribed to Phyllis,

And I will read it. Come, prepare to blush!

I look upon the heavens high,
And lo the heavens are blue;
I look into my true-love's eye,
And find the selfsame hue.
They say that Heaven is there above,
And yet in vain I peer;
But when I look upon my love

I know that Heaven is here.

How's this! How's this! My grandmother's were gray!

Her eyes were gray, for I remember them!
And here are many verses more that praise
Eyes brown, and black, and golden hair,
And all well rhymed and smooth. Good sir,
No more beneath your frown, with nimble fingers,
I'll count sweet syllables that whisper love;
But these, with altered names, I'll copy out
To send to those who toss my heart in play.
Good sir, for this rich legacy I thank you!
- P. McArthur.

1 See Canto X., line 42 of "The Vision of Dante."

BENEATH the gilded dome had party strife
Run high, and argument waxed hot. At last
The angry session closed; the bill had passed,
And, crushed, I turned me home. No keen-
edged knife

Cuts deeper than sharp words, and my mind, rife
With bitter thoughts, stormed to itself, as fast
The rushing train sped on. Sudden, all cast
And bent, a row of trees flashed by, and that day's
life

In the same flash, as warped, I saw. Quick, then,
Uprose my better self, in strength, and said,
"Know you, a man need have no fear of men

And Righteousness and Truth are not yet dead.” Those wind-swept trees will greet the morning light

Unchanged, but I stand straight again to-night. -A. S. Bridgman.

HEN in the prehistoric ages the Titanic battle of natural forces ceased, leaving the record of the struggle graven on the rock, when the oceans had rolled back into their basins, and the glaciers that had overwhelmed the land had melted and slipped away into the sea, there extended eastward from the general coast line of New England a remarkable promontory, opposing its rugged front to the buffets of the Atlantic. Its outer and principal portion was an island, separated from the mainland by a creek of some width. In succeeding ages the deposit of matter by the tides formed marshes in the broad bed of the creek and closed its mouth with a beach wall, since opened by an artificial cut, restoring to the outer promontory its original island character. Glaciers had rubbed and scratched the surface of the headland and overlaid it with extensive morainal deposits of pebbles, rocks, and boulders, some of the latter strangely formed and yet more strangely placed.

To this part of the New England coast, in 1605 and 1606, came the Sieur Champlain, naming the headland Cap aux Isles, and the harbor on its southwest side, into which he sailed and made a landing, Le Beauport. Champlain mapped the country, which he found covered with forests of varied growth and with native vines and fruits. In 1614, that energetic adventurer and jaunty narrator, Captain John Smith, exploring the New England coast from the Penobscot to Cape Cod, gave to Cap aux Isles the name of Tragabigzanda and called its three islands off shore the Three Turks' Heads, in commemoration of his own marvellous adventure in the wars between Turkey and Transylvania. Before his "Description of New England" was published, however, he had obtained the renaming of many of his localities by Prince Charles, who bestowed upon the island cape the name of his mother, Anne of Denmark; and so Cape Ann it is to this day.

It is due to Smith to say that the people of Cape Ann owe him honor for his spirited defence of the dignity and importance of the fishing industry in those days, when it was hardly looked upon as an honorable calling and when piracy was held in far higher respect. Smith's words, published long before Cape Ann was even settled by white men, might almost be embodied now in some memorial to Congress in behalf of Gloucester fishermen.